Lines

Taking a snow-plough to a field of daffodils tulips,

you beep the horn.

Move! Get out of the way! Stupid flowers.

The not-daffodils move. They get out of your way.

Uprooted. Not quite dead 

(how long does it take for a field of tulips to die?).

If your shoelaces are undone,

you may miss the spectacle of life,

as you fuss with knotty string,

tying pretty little bows, instead of taking it all in. 

‘This is getting us nowhere,’ you said,

and you were right.

I could not identify a starling,

only eagles and owls.

Perhaps if the starling were the size of an elephant

I might take more notice of it.

We need to address the starling in the room, darling.

How was your trip to the dentist?

Did you make it inside this time?

A line which doesn’t fit into a poem

has a line struck through it,

and then what is more important:

the line, or the line underneath the line?

The eyes are the windows to the soul.

I always thought that this meant you could see

someone’s soul by looking into their eyes,

and it never once occurred to me

that the soul looking out of its windows

was the more important part of the observation.

I’m not convinced by windows.

The eyes are simply the eyes -

it’s the soul which is made of glass:

a mirror which takes everything in

but holds on to none of it.

A blind soul holds on to the darkness,

takes it all in; not reflecting, but becoming.

The eyes do not see any more than the telephone hears.

Flowers, birds, shoelaces, 

trespassing on the border of solipsism, philosophical rambling:

I mean, I suppose that’s one way to approach a poem.

Sometimes, nothing is beautiful,

by which I mean that 

sometimes I forget to open my eyes.

Maybe the lines which are never written

are the really important ones.