The Bee

Leah-Lyd wants to know

what colour a chameleon would change if it fell into water.

I'm pretty sure she's hoping I’ll say they turn clear;

it's kind of what I want to tell her too.

Later, scootering to school,

she notices a dead bumblebee on the pavement;

its colours still vivid.

After a bit of convincing, I place it on her palm

where it rests on its side.

“It might just be sleeping Daddy,” she says,

cautiously keeping her eyes on it.

I think of clear chameleons again

and what matters most.

“It might be, yes,” I reply.

“Let’s move it where no one will step on it,” she says,

before placing it lovingly (and I sense with some relief)

in some grass by the trunk of a tree.

I hope it wakes up. 

Me and the Moon

A playful rapport

with the space-suspended Moon.

“You orbit me,”

I tell it to its face;

just banter.

We’ve weaved through hard times,

me and the Moon

“Where have you been?”

I ask it after the clouds have cleared.

“You look different.”

I think of an African fable;

a mosquito who thinks it matters to an elephant.

“Goodbye,”

it says to the grazing giant, who replies,

“I didn’t know you were there.”

Tonight the moon is sulky;

an unglamorous gibbous

in a cold cloudless sky.

“I know you’re there, Friend,”

I reassure the Moon.

“I'm here too.”  

The Gull

This morning

as I walked to work

sipping at the idea

of solipsism

and the perfect spring morning

I couldn’t be sure of

a Hove gull breached

what I was beginning to think

was a lonely periphery

Erratic and out of sync

with the morning crew

and traffic

It cut through a cloud

of starlings and away

out to the giggling sea

and I knew like the yachts there

I was not alone