TOUCHING AND TASTING

A dervish lies beyond any awareness
that your footsteps have crunched nearby
and at their loudest were suddenly still
and silent beside the plastic shopping bag
fluttering raggedly in the weeds on the edge
of the road.

Cocksfoot and Timothy grasses waver
back and forth shoulder high-stiff and
unable to release their seeds without a
thrashing by the wind or the chance of them
being dropped and scattered from the beaks of

small birds engaged in acts of random pillage.

On the dry dusty ground, an eggshell blue plastic
drinking straw catches your eye, and you pick it up
marvelling at the articulation of it's elbow. It is still
in your possession as you walk back past the dervish,
whose fingertips tremor, touching the face behind
the veil in the same place.

It is then that you remember the bumblebees' nest
that you found this morning, out in the shed when
you unrolled and shifted a bundle of old floormats.
Prying open an unhatched cell, you discovered the
pupating bee had an outstretched tongue, almost the
length of it's body.

BY ASSOCIATION

You were just walking, crossing streets
between pulses of traffic, post five PM
Friday it's Holmes bound or boot thumping
Loud ~ Ooonst! Ooonst! Ooonst! showered
lightly lagered and cruising into the City

You were just walking, instead of choosing
between honey-grain or dark-rye, and posing
with a polystyrene cup to sip a free 'Royale'
coffee, gazing absently down the nave toward

queues before the altars of perpetual succour

You were just walking, past a carsales yard
at the junction when you stopped and let your
imagination ride with the genii shrieking from the
boot of a Tin Can in the fast lane of an autobahn,
it was a comfortable fit for the fist within the glove

You were just walking, and slipping the ATM
card back in your wallet, there was some sorting out
and discarding of out of date statements and then
you stood still, were you on the inside looking out,
or could they still see the joint around your hips?

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