If I am already broken

If I am already broken

then I am infinitely light

and need not fear

the loss of carapace

or ties or mooring rope.

If I am already broken

I can travel far, untraceable,

and am almost impossible to stop.

If I am already broken

I am almost unbreakable

and like a dandelion seed

am almost impossible to stop.

Rogan Wolf, May 2011

Three take and three leave behind

I shall take a bike

slender and misty grey

to streak forward when the lights turn green

faster than anything.

It will glide me past trouble

slip me between stuck lines.

I shall take my laughter

to float like blue flowers

on the boiling waves

it will negotiate rocks

like a rush of sea-weed.

I shall take my words

my answer my conquest

my capacity to leave

a foot-print behind.

Words are a force

that can part waves.

And what would I leave at home ?

Some of my history

feels unarguably dispensable.

Some of my guilts

seem to do nothing

except ruin my meal-times

and cause my eyes to dim.

Some of my learning

has cost me so much

I would have preferred ignorance.

Rogan Wolf, April 2011

The Aged Authoress

She waits to be delivered

shifting in her pillowed cell

nodding as the words

wander through her mind.

The ground keeps opening

under her feet, the walls

waver and she hears the wailing

of widows.

She shrieks

"Let me be delivered

before I die !"

She shrieks to the nurse

to the air-raid warden

to the bearded machine-gunner

to the undertaker

all rushing

about their business -

"Let me be delivered

before I die !"

Rogan Wolf, June 2011

Living your body

I have to force myself

to look into your eyes

for I see our race there -

our beauty, of course,

but also immeasurable sorrow

and ancestral shames so appalling

you yearn to claim

them from us,

to spare us.

We walk entwined,

astonished to have met,

your long legs tentative,

as if you question your right

to tread this ground.

You live in your body

like a nightingale in the wood,

like an owl between copses,

drenched in moonlight.

Rogan Wolf Spring 2011