'Nothing at all!'

It's that time of year again. Kindergarten is out for a few weeks, beer and wine are flowing on the balcony, and friends are knocking on the door. Conditions are not good for blogging, and the only thing I can hope to write is the occasional poem.

I've been scribbling a series of sonnets addressed to my friend Sio Siasau, who spent much of this year in New York City. It turns out that Sio had been writing a series of poems of his own in America: I'm very curious to see how they read alongside my epistles.

Here's one of my 'Sonnets for Sio'. It was written with the assistance of my oldest son.

Chapter 63

So now you are writing poems, Sio! 

Like a watch ticking in a coffin

the blank page is patient. You bend your neck

and squint, and notice the pits and crevices

in the paper, and blink at its glare. 

                               Coleridge crossed 

the same white desert, looking for the oasis

of Kubla Khan. Xanadu was a date palm

shading a mudpool, a civilisation

of flies. 

           Aneirin is awake and at the table

beside me, tinkering with his lego while I type.

He looks at the almost blank screen and asks

'What are you doing Daddy?'. 

I tell him I'm crossing a white desert 

with only a cup of lukewarm tea to sustain me.

I ask him if he'd like to travel with me, to join

the poem, and he replies 'No! I want to say nothing, Dad,

nothing at all!'