Nautilus
Awake within a sea of sleep,
buoyed by the rhythmic tides
of breathing out and breathing deep.
The grey-walled waves and dark divides
surround my heart, an ark of ache,
whose bruised and buried pulse abides
in shudderings of give and take.
How long these souls, oblivious,
will float in dreaming while I break
beneath the weight of being us,
how long my old world torn away
will haunt this diving nautilus,
is measured in the heave and sway,
in storms that drown what I would say.
Rain Trance
I love this constant thrumming on the roof,
wrapping me inside its thick cocoon
of sound, a monastery in the rough.
Percussive chants, these waves refresh the bone,
carry in their very pulse a silence –
not an eye, but a collective calm
whose soft crescendo beckons with its cadence.
Through swells of chattering I hear a psalm.
My sense of place dissolves, the clouding hours
disintegrate, my thoughts – mere whisper-heft –
form solo islands in a sea of choirs.
And who or what am I? And what is left
of this world as I drift away, aloof?
Just a constant thrumming on the roof.