This Tornado Loves You...

I've recently been working on some poetry for a dance performance, so here's a taster... It should be read very slowly and languidly with music...

Broken Home.

This tornado loves you
Swirls dust caresses
Lifts your feet to drop ballerina toes
To drift over confetti
Of dirt and leaves
And somewhere you are dancing through all this

Dust devils lilt like hula girls
Pushing the sky with hips side to side
Liberating the earth
For sky and wind and impending water
This rain will soak you through

And when it does you are transparent
A magnifying body for the view
An eyeglass of diaphanous flesh
And crystalline bones

They do not break but guide my eye through landscapes
A hint of fingers points to the old tree as it is uprooted
And its roots spin cobwebs from the ground

Objects scar the wind like key scrapes down a car
They are homeless
Call out for their lost owners like misplaced pets
Impending fossils, they do not understand
This delicate balance
Of light and shade – a chiaroscuro of movement

Rhythm

Curls invisible ribbons

A childhood gymnastic trick

I remember how good you were

(Isn’t it funny to think that everything that is everything has come from the earth? Is made from these same atoms? Is grown or smelt or smashed?)

This tornado is a leveller
An activist for new starts
A pellucid tear
A keepsake for lightning

(Did you ever have one of those toys when you were little? A creature for secret compartments? A plastic shell in which to place treasures? Push them down. Hide them so they are hard to pull out again. Some actions have semi-permanent results. Mine was an amber snail called Sweet Heart.)

Bright light escapes from the sky
To reach for the ground
A longing for earthing
A self-destructive adventure
Zig-zagging

I understand that one

But you?
This tornado loves you
Holds you suspended
In animation
The landscape comes alive
With unforetold movement
Waves of dust like the aftermath of cartoon chases

But you are a terranium
A glass dome licked with butterflies and ladybirds
Sweet tooth to their touch
Stroked with ferns like Egyptian fans
You are temperate
In this tempestuous climate
It is only you who are safe

I write letters with biro on leaves and hope they reach you
Open scrunched up palms
Let the sky take them
My words are taken from me
To you
I don’t know if they will reach you
If the sky will let them reach you

I know this
For
Small jealousies
For
Petty arguments
For
This tornado loves you

And I am still