Two poems published with Lunate

Winter boy, landscape

For Vincent

And this one is Mount Fuji, you squeal

with your cold little hands caked in sand.

A sliver of moon hangs over the park

drifting on a tangle of stars all strung up as lights.

And this one is Mount Inari, see, it’s much smaller.

I nod my chin all the way to my chest

as you brush a river that sweeps us into

a sand city, the rake of your small fingers clearing the way.

Now you excavate a lake, the bowl of your palm

pushing aside the grains until you’re pleased with the depth.

We pause to survey, then listen to the hurtling of trams

over your shoulder, the warm glow of the windows

which twinkle through the wreaths of our breath,

the smell of roasted chestnuts shimmering from a box on the street.

As you return to your Japanese landscape, a country

you haven’t seen, have only dreamed of,

I witness as whole cities, great mountains, are born

from your gentle thinking, your wonder touch.

And when another little boy jumps,

crushing your creation, you don’t rush to rebuild.

It was there, you say, and we saw it,

and we did, and because that’s true - we go home.

We decide it doesn’t matter, because

it was only borrowed and brief,

and still, you say, we can share it between us.

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Ocean charms

You gesture between us, the tide out

and sand stretched drying in rivulets

where the water has been. Back then,

we had a hand in everything. Sand colossi,

bottle caps, burial pits for misplaced gloves,

crab claws and sea glass. We ran after the waves,

wet and kind as dogs, washed in cold foam

and rinsed of becoming.

Together, we walk the years back

towards the shallows, a ripple of distance.

Along the way we drape ourselves in

all species of slim green weeds, slick and dark

and slippery with feeling. We steal glances

back and forth, furtive as kids lifting sweets

from the corner shop. Your nails sugared

with wet sand, my lips glazed and bitten red

as anemones. We fill our pockets with cockles,

shark eyes, tulip shells and angel wings –

ocean charms we once collected, rough as memory,

in hopes they might summon back the tide.