At the end of the day<\/b><\/p>\n
(for Lisa)<\/b><\/p>\n
\n
After attending a funeral<\/p>\n
of one who died beloved<\/p>\n
but too young<\/p>\n
I have lost track of the trembling world.<\/p>\n
The black pen lies still.<\/p>\n
What can I say?<\/p>\n
So I read again my favourite poet\u2019s work<\/p>\n
written as he was dying.<\/p>\n
Boughs scrape my roof<\/p>\n
stirred by a night wind.<\/p>\n
Pictures and photos embrace me.<\/p>\n
School art colours warm my bedroom walls<\/p>\n
as if safeguarding me.<\/p>\n
Our boys with time on their side.<\/p>\n
They are taller now<\/p>\n
swept along by lusty life.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
These poems daunt me<\/p>\n
humanity haunting each wise line<\/p>\n
clear thoughts amid chaos<\/p>\n
medals for valour<\/p>\n
in the face of withering knowledge.<\/p>\n
I glance one more time at the photos<\/p>\n
those fresh faces<\/p>\n
their time on this earth ahead.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Impedimenta<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Opposite the horizon of the dark sea,<\/p>\n
bending, rattling, she can\u2019t make the gas surge,<\/p>\n
shields a small flame, sputtering.<\/p>\n
She might as well have landed in a squat.<\/p>\n
Only the stove will light up, just,<\/p>\n
not the hot water, nor the fridge,<\/p>\n
that stove\u2019s wan heat in constant danger.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
She fumes, needing tea\u2019s habit, a shower,<\/p>\n
needier still for the comfort of wrongs put right.<\/p>\n
He slumps on the sullen periphery<\/p>\n
of this gas bottleneck, this powerlessness,<\/p>\n
knowing they gaze in different directions,<\/p>\n
a man with anniversaries of battles.<\/p>\n
Outside, a sombre sky, wind skirling.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A wasps\u2019 nest caused the mini-crisis,<\/p>\n
abandoned in the narrow copper pipe,<\/p>\n
a paperiness lighter than sea air,<\/p>\n
now blown away, disappeared, like time.<\/p>\n
He stays up late reading a novel by gaslight<\/p>\n
about the way love fades at the edges.<\/p>\n
She sleeps, exhausted by the heft of the day.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Poet as ageing narcissist<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He watches himself in the third person<\/p>\n
at this gathering of his blood<\/p>\n
marking a Round Figured Birthday,<\/p>\n
hair, beard beyond mid-life grey,<\/p>\n
not ageing well like wine or cheese,<\/p>\n
a mockery of pulsing yesterday<\/p>\n
which, like other damning birthday evidence,<\/p>\n
astonishes him, and, perhaps, his clansmen.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He stands to read.\u00a0 They watch him<\/p>\n
watching himself, uncertain, like him,<\/p>\n
as he mimes patting pockets for poems,<\/p>\n
whether to smile or exchange glances,<\/p>\n
so they, watchers and watched,<\/p>\n
moderate their expressions,<\/p>\n
stay cool, will a heel-crunch of any emotion,<\/p>\n
preferring the relief of effete jokes,<\/p>\n
hope his voice doesn\u2019t crack like his mind.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
They make him weak, they make him strong.<\/p>\n
He knows they discuss his increasing lapses<\/p>\n
when he drifts off to the word sanctuary,<\/p>\n
forgetful blunders that once never were,<\/p>\n
so makes the effort to stay in tune,<\/p>\n
drawing close to black night\u2019s fire<\/p>\n
though a yearning to cast off lures him<\/p>\n
to travel light with his failing old pals,<\/p>\n
imagination, memory, the first person.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Vistavision<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A billowy ruckus of air, hammering<\/p>\n
her dark thoughts, a staccato sound of war.<\/p>\n
The pilot covering the famous yacht race<\/p>\n
lands his helicopter on flat rocks<\/p>\n
to collect his annual order of crayfish.<\/p>\n
Stilled, their view is a sea eagle\u2019s<\/p>\n
from the small mountain they must climb.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This time she gets his smell of napalm joke,<\/p>\n
prefers the dewy morning\u2019s eucalyptus scent,<\/p>\n
the enduring islands in the glittering strait.<\/p>\n
A wallaby bounds across their track,<\/p>\n
distracting her from the direction marker.<\/p>\n
She misses it, and he corrects her,<\/p>\n
another irritation, like his movie quips.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
They see the helicopter lift off, bank,<\/p>\n
circle the cove three times in farewell,<\/p>\n
a gunmetal dragonfly flashing low<\/p>\n
against the murky violet of scrub and scree,<\/p>\n
the sea flogged by the blades\u2019 commotion.<\/p>\n
He strains to keep its ghostly flicker in sight.<\/p>\n
On the track she seems to disappear like a dream.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Unreconciled<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I moved only a few miles away, but long ago.<\/p>\n
Walking around where I once lived<\/p>\n
I feel like one who has been in far exile,<\/p>\n
wondering why I have neglected this return,<\/p>\n
discomfited smelling the tangy neighbourhood,<\/p>\n
wood smoke, breakfast cooking, scattered leaves,<\/p>\n
calculating sequences of events<\/p>\n
involving my people in the clandestine past,<\/p>\n
now vague, unlike memorable town landmarks.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In thrall crossing driveways I strain to recall<\/p>\n
exactly what led to this estrangement<\/p>\n
but chronological memory baffles me,<\/p>\n
details waver, shadowy facts confusing.<\/p>\n
I bear what seems like guilty sorrow.<\/p>\n
For moving away?\u00a0 For being memory-drunk?<\/p>\n
The town\u2019s pool where our boy learned to swim,<\/p>\n
superseded, of course, by a heated facility,<\/p>\n
lies eerily quiet, its black water still.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I swerve toward the safety of my parked car,<\/p>\n
leaving what can never be left.<\/p>\n
Short-cutting through familiar back lanes<\/p>\n
behind houses where newcomers spend days,<\/p>\n
I pass a fence so rickety-faded<\/p>\n
it could date from my boyhood.<\/p>\n
I feel overcome by loss, imagined echoes,<\/p>\n
want that fence imbued with its original hue,<\/p>\n
straight, strong again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the end of the day (for Lisa) After attending a funeral of one who died beloved but too young I have lost track of the trembling world. The black pen lies still. What can I say? So I read again my favourite poet\u2019s work written as he was dying. Boughs scrape my roof stirred […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":934,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2366","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n