Author Archives: Damian Garside

GAZEBO

I built myself gazebo
step by step
in my mind

hoping that it might be
pretty much the ideal
place to write Nature poetry,
Japanese tanka, and haiku

can close my eyes
feel centred, grounded
and put
pen to paper

shut out, if but for a moment,
the world of worry, serious debt,
huge obligation

alone except for
things I host
with a yen to explore

things curiously ambivalent,
hybrid-seeming, here
from the dawn
of time, perhaps,
but currently sharing
this address corporeal
in
manner internal

could be of our world,
most secretly so, or

genuinely alien, of home-
world extraterrestrial

creatures in size ever-
shifting, unphased by
change of shape
wholesale genetic
adjustment
and spatial orientation

like this exquisite, verdegris
dragonfly with
what looks like
neon
under-lighting

buzzing around my head in
size and demeanour
flitting across the

breadth of
every spectrum, between
tiny, metallic waspy thing

and
titanium-alloyed killer
drone

but
this my gazebo
this my throne.

STONE’S THROW AWAY

I think there is a moment
of pure clarity
but then it goes
then everything goes

never having experienced
any such clarity, indeed
anything pure

I am at a loss
to extend you an image
provide a metaphor

but
time draining away
like someone of something
nicked
its artery

that moment of clarity
of deep and complete
change in perception
must be near

if not at hand
but a stone’s throw away