Do you ever notice people avoiding you in the street, slipping in among the crowds rather than stopping and speaking? Perhaps it's just their reaction to me. On Monday this happened and rather than shout her name out I watched her slide away.
25.5.15.
I
suppose she saw me,
abreast
of where she walked,
as
we were enjoying the finer points of our ongoing conversation.
She
employed an obvious strategy:
get ahead of us,
avoid
the inevitable polite interaction.
Her
velocity through the lunch time throng suddenly making her visible.
I
let her go.
That's
it, that's all, no more.
Just
a person I knew pre-redundancy.
An
eight years on stranger.
Working
hard not to say hello.
Not sure about every line, or in deed if it needs punctuation. I had envisaged it as a prose poem but it looked lumpy and I felt it needed the space to stretch out. It's a minor poem at best.
This next poem is another work in progress.
The Cartography of the Soul
They
had robbed him.
First
it was his parents,
marriage
floundering then separation.
Mostly
it was his schooling,
bright,
brittle social construction.
His
ancestors had sailed oceans,
criss-crossed
the freezing sea,
sure
of the craft beneath their feet.
And
here he was, hollow inside,
tied
to his logic by cynicism.
This
is how my world will be.
Love
would not save him,
as
soon as the children could leave
he
shut the door on his way out,
put
half the globe between him and them.
Still
it was not enough.
The
gulf could not be crossed even in sleep.
He
dreams; sexton in his left hand,
looking
for at least one star in the darkling sky.
The
black water ripples with no wind.
When he wakes he
knows this is how it will continue,
No
map, no compass, nowhere.
I put it away about three months ago and still cannot yet see its true shape. Any suggestions?
I leave you with Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan off the Mountain Goats new album.
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