The coral reef

Suspended from strands of light

Upside down lies a coral reef.

My living room’s edge marks off its territory.

Stippled hard droplets form its surface

Stalactites of a prehistoric life

Threaten an oak wooden floor.

The bike lamps I used for creating light

Emanate from its centre…arching and bending

Each droplet into formed ridges

Resembling the Andes and the Pyrenees

A mass of landscape colliding, where foot has not settled

Only stars in their orbits… craters of the moon.

I marvel at this vast universe from an old writing chair

At the farm house table where this view is served

Magnolia gloss peels from the entrance door like gills of fish

And coffee rings spin like planets in orbit

On a coffee table lying dormant,

A glass coffin lowered on to an oak wooden floor.

Like space dust the light particles settle

I flick the switch; I’m on the dark side now

Only the amber maroon brunt of the night sky

Nestles against the window, radiating through panes

The blinds stand motionless in their knowing.

The centre of my light universe is now my laptop screen

Dazzling bright showing aging ridges of my hands

Hands that have taken the scars of virgins from the soil

And planted them in water to make them grow.

The oily green of night trickles through my thoughts

And I’m in a world where the stillness is thickened like slow cooking broth

A swirl of tabaco smoke lifts in the stillness

As another life waits to breathe

Under the darkened rain blanket of a coral reef sky.