Dave Kavanagh

Lane choked
with overgrowth.

A slight breeze
stirs a verdant sea
of cocksfoot and fescue.

Feathered ferns unfurl
In hues of green and rust.

Late summer
hangs on tangled threads,
promises and regrets.

Burgeoning deflated,
harvest weeks away.

Air heavy,
humidity clawing
at damp clothes.

autumn waits,
a promise on bated breath.

It was not a dream
though memory says it was.
That house of straw and muck
and cast brick.

Asbestos sheeting cold as ice in winter
and oven hot in summer.
Amplifying the cries of pain.
Rain and wind rattling the eaves.

Fingers of cold weaving
in under corrugations.
Chilling spines of exposed bone
prone bodies shivering on wooden floors

Freezing words unspoken
cold lips, the kiss goodnight. A betrayal
on a soft child cheek.
Too weak to fight that house
Of straw and muck and cast brick.

Of voices raised in pain and rain
flooding in under a green door.
Floors awash with leaves and snapped twigs
lies and broken promises. Deals reneged upon
contracts voided between a demon and a thief.

Bailing fast to stop us sinking.
Thinking it was just the water
pulling us down to drown
in the mire of hate and disappointment
when all along it was us, bad blood
caused the flood.

A deluge of despair in a lair
of broken lives.
A house of straw and muck
and cast brick.

– Dave Kavanagh

Beneath a cover green
forest silence. Loud!
The song of heaving life
the chattering crowd.
The crackle of feet
crunching on litter
The scatter of life
creatures a skitter.
The breathe of air
sighing through laughing willows.
Rain drops down
on chestnut, trifoliate pillows.
A cessation of song
in the canopy
the death of silence
no more cacophony.
Then music of water
singing rapids ahead
relief for burning blisters
burst and bled.
Limp on new walker
hikes almost done.
Trees will give way to.
blue skies and sun.

– Dave Kavanagh