Midas Touch
I was about to take the first bite
from an apple when it happened.
My teeth skidded over the surface,
dragging lip from gum.
I dropped the thing like I´d been scalded
and it smashed. Glass, not gold.
I reached out to a chair, paused,
then laid my hand on. In ripples,
starting at my fingertips, the wood
paled down the back, across the seat,
down the legs. Paled to transparency.
Nobody´d sit there again.
The strangest part was looking
into a mirror and seeing
right through myself, all the way
back to childhood, like a story
I´d thought left behind in the dark.
This touch was its sequel.
And this is another poem from the collection:
Crossing The Alps
Two hours out of the village
I´d climbed the mountain´s shaded side
two months deeper into winter.
Coarse grass was brown, ground water
had flowed over the path
and frozen. I stopped.
The smooth sheet sloped down,
curled round the overhang, drips
falling onto rocks in the gully.
I put one foot on the ice,
shifted my weight, hesitated,
then moved my other foot forward.
Five steps carried me over, my pulse racing.
I stood on the brink, dislodging pebbles
and knew I had no way back.
As I climbed higher, peaks
reared up behind the black
ridgeback. Cresting it,
I toppled into the new view. Bank
behind bank of ice anchored on stone
all the way to Italy
The village I´d left,
tethered to the foothills
by a winding cord of tarmac.
