(see Shunryu Suzuki, not always so, ‘Direct Experience of Reality’)

alien un-sealed bleak January sands
easterly greys grey wet rainless cold
new year presents new life on toast
battleship snaps delete old selfie-reaches
for unbecomeable femininity’s
full set and pearl a hairdo smile’s poor sub-set
of vectors toward that gentle dimension

— when suddenly another woman speaks of beach
magnificence their always difference
— surprised camera cold hands slip tongue to trope
grandness agreed in lone beach walks
‘King of the beach, or Queen’ – or fool maybe

caught between selfies reaching invisibly
and today’s stubble with pink bobbled hair
de rigueur wondering at friendliness’s gender
difference and which tongue i speak with
in her eyes, was how she read me why she stopped,
and where did she get those pink wellies

so conversations die in my stuckness
sea turning then carward almost crow-brained
by an empty shell dropped I play-chase
it away, find life on life vacated
leave it for warmth and a book
to the black bird’s life scratchings
grope blind for another pot

A. H / K. H-H (5th January 2019 & minor changes 29th/30th June)

another revision and a re-post – i hid this one thinking it pretentious and reaching for poetry, too prosey, too whatever, but it meant something, in relation to that reading, synchronous and life seeking — and maybe as i wondered if it lived up to the title, but it is appropriate, in its small way

the retreat to the car really did bring that reading