If my fortunes should one day fade, And experience dull the sharp edge of fame, And popularity precipitate out of its false solution To rub salt into the wounds of life’s insults – When the rest of the world is still waiting to win this game, Just give me an orchard of my very own, With trees I can call by name. A living database of the ones who stayed, The ones I helped raise, Even the ones who got away: Each one a monument to the moment we gave ourselves the permis

We live by the light of shadows: Absent figures cut their silhouettes Behind Act V curtains, Where paper dolls flirt In the muted hush Of a stayquiet breeze; Pockets full of posies – Hands linked in mind and material marking boundaries I never knew how to find. (But Embankment was much sweeter when the busker sang that night). The skies fly by as painted scenes, Fat nimbus accumulating cumulo-witnesses To our wretched lovelorn dreams; Where the mushroom-cloudy heads