Rainbow On the Loch

The morning whispers quietly in my ear                                                                           

Sleepless gravedigger                                                                   

The gulls are self-possessed as they swim 

Through mud clouds like black ink                         

I see them like amulets, wearing their February witchcraft                         

As I pass the lurching trees 

Blowing over the cornfields like a virus                                   

Past the winter sunflowers                                                                     

Past the dreamblue blowfishes 

They speak of the weather, how the black water is cold                           

I alight from the train, wanting to be happy                                     

I follow the pylons, the yellow and green wilderness  

Awake like a symptom                                                       

At the edge of the water, I look out at the green hills                         

The foggy mountains singing in the wind 

And I get nervous, like when you're having sex                                                            

Or going on a job interview                                                     

In that moment I saw life, life as an angel 

And in that moment I saw death, death as a rainbow                 

The water came to me like a spring bean                               

Like a balloon or a bearded nightmare or brown leaves

In this whiskey-scented aquarium                                             

The southern ochre rippled, moon-sunk and breathless                               

Like sad music. I watched the obsidian waves 

Jutting back and forth  like words glittering on the page                       

In the necropolis of my Arcadian dreams                                         

I remembered you like a mushroom

Leaving me hopeless like an estuary                                             

Like a sun in a mirror                                       

Glasslike and forgotten, as the day bleeds into night 

I am a lark                                                                       

I am a hawthorn                                                                                                

Imagining myself drowning like Michelangelo

At the harbour                                                           

I am a cat with no lives left and it's rain season                     

By the red door, waiting for the train.