Learning to Spell
(to Lorca)

The boy learns to spell leaf
it turns to leaves on a yellow tree.
Leaf through the mistake of years –
a complicated task, a lot of rubbing out.
There’s knife and shelf, the rule’s the same
do your homework. By mistake the evening
a knife-edge wind cuts the leaves.
The alarm, the shelves full of books,
the guards are spell-bound.
The boy changes into a bird
watches through the mist on the panes
writes sentences with the word leaf,
a complicated task, a lot of rubbing out.
They leaf through the shelves.
After the wind there was only one leaf left.
On the page a trail of tears, the stanzas stretched out.

The Hiding Moon

Last night the moon was hiding
behind a cloud, Lorca’s gypsy sky over the bay:
the night, so nightly night.
She siphoned the black sounds through
her flamenco fingertips fanning inwards,
her arms and shoulders expanding
outwards, to embrace the struggle
of change.
She regards the past,
a memory now covered in fog,
snaking along the line of foothills.
The present is a collision
of city noises, the highway hum
across the park. Beyond the factory rooftops
the starlings twitter to sunset and the weeping guitar.