grey blue stone bifurcated
by a band of sparkling quartz,
glad eye from the Pleistocene,
it sits on my mind’s table.
Like sadness, it has the quality
of being wholly passive.
Dark to its core, it glows at dusk
like a dying bulb. Dry but shaped
by water, flung up by streams
and tides it exerts a force
against all expectation.
Seems to be saying anything
may happen: has and will.
One day, you may pick up
that stone and pitch it, leaving
behind a small depression.

It was never great, even back in the day.
Here Kumquat May had her episode:
Jack Hughes! Jack Hughes! she wailed
at a white-haired man, Der WeiBe Engel!
whose eyes behind tinted lenses flicked
like an analog needle. Then he was gone.
Some say she was his other woman.
Some say her beef was with Guinness
(that black door marked with a toucan)
more [...]

Where did the seal heads come from?
They were a present from a fisherman
who wished to woo the scientist.
Not an answer. A queer posy these,
a devalued currency, almost contraband.

As though a hand had reached inside to rub
my liver. This was the nose of the mole.
Later, I felt a prickle, a draught in my eye.

This was the southwest breeze blowing
where the stone-blind mole had passed.
This was the meat of what was unspoken.

The absolute bedrock of morals, the top-soil
of incomprehension in which you turned
and said: Your wife tells me everything.

This was the unknown known, the mole
surfacing through the green. And blinking
by the swings on that suburban lawn
was my penchant for darkness and filth,
my penchant for sticking my nose in.