Visitor 

When the clock grows quiet

and I have changed into evening

you come into the room soft

as moonrays that light

the back of my arms. 

"How have you been?"

you ask, as the cat springs

from your favourite chair

so we can break bread over

midnight conversation. 

*

Learning a language 

 I walk to the woodland

to seek shapes 

in moss stained on trees. 

But there is no tapestry.

Only bark that is hard 

a trail of straw footsteps

in the weave of dead leaves 

and sunlight

a path that disappears. 

I walk to the canal

to catch words in water

before they splash over lock 

and drill stone.

But even if I take a stick

and trouble the glaze with my name 

ripples remain unintelligible.

A coot swims crooked circles

under a pulsing bridge. 

Is it that this language is indistinct? 

Or am I blind 

unable to tell line 

from shadow, green from grey?

Or both? 

Uneasy travellers 

destined to read different alphabets

draw arrow as sail-boat

twenty types of twilight 

discerned as one. 

And I walk to the sea

to look for messages in dunes 

and sea-grass

but find a tangle of red flowers I cannot identify.

The sea shuffles 

illegible scatters of sand.  

          to hear this poem click play

* 

Postcard from Van Gogh to John Russell 

Some would consider this a lazy 

way to paint. No need to offer wine, 

coffee, even water. No cost of a model.

No rearrangements. No unexpected 

complaints. And I am not tired.  

A face, left and right swapped. 

Scars newly seen. 

Self-portrait. Or mask. 

Not like Gauguin, he drew me

"dead tired and emotionally terrible" 

taking so long in painting 

that the sunflowers died. 

Or you Russell, making me out 

the grand master, in a brown suit 

holding a pencil. The serious artist  

scrutinising his work. No, I am

a clutch of greedy brushes

a wild pallet of colour 

sculpting my hungry ghost.