Tangled up heartstrings 

Woven into twisted knots

Never unravel 

A blazing autumn 

Burning the world to orange 

As when flint hits steel

The old man’s beard 

Clinging to ancient hedgerows

Waiting for a spark

These wasted fields 

Ripped into shreds by machines

While the last owl hoots

Cloud covered full moon

What secrets can be hidden

In seventeen words? 

The fat orange moon

Squeezing out every last drop

Of desperate daylight 

On a heron’s wing

Up where the orange autumn

Leaves the year behind 

Under the wood pile

With the frogs and the rabbits

Reduced to worm casts

Staring carefully 

Into every tiny drop

Rain is nature’s tears

I read the autumn 

Between the lines and the veins

Of these thin dead leaves

Between our thick skulls 

Our wires crossed and tangled 

There is no undo

Far in the distance 

The heron’s long legs guiding

Eyes to the sunset

In the milky way

Deep in the solar system 

There is an escape 

Bubbles and bad jokes

A constant stream of questions 

It must be bed time 

Deep underwater 

The sound of blood in my ears 

Everything is blurred

Under the surface 

Suspended in warm saline

Where I lost myself 

The cool autumn lakes

Dry leaves skip on dusty paths

Where do we go now?

The stars drift apart

As the universe expands

And we like them part

Into the darkness 

The long lonely lightless times

And all this distance 

The low sickle moon

Hanging above harvest fields 

An alchemist’s dream 

Hanging from tree tops

Above the slow grey water

My life in my hands

If this was the edge 

Would I take a step backwards? 

You know I would jump

In scattered rain clouds 

The separated sunlight 

Splits into spectra 

A single pine tree

A raft floating in the sea

A lonely island