Decision Time

When down means up
and up has nowhere to go
save for the desert sand
barren and bare shifting
through helpless fingers
or the hour glass waste
with two trunkless stones
propping up the sundial’s
wrinkled face and time’s sneer
of command its wilderness
voice always a choice
between thinking and feeling
for yourself or believing
frozen words dropped
from winter’s snowflakes
to melt in the toothless mouth
of a new day another decision
the future laid out ahead
and you with no map
no GPS nothing to get you
to the last place you want to go

Comment:

Some strange touches of surrealism in this little poem that weaves its way through an intertextual maze recognizable, I hope, to many of those who read this blog and follow these comments on a regular basis. Travelers from far-off lands tinkle their echoes through the lines.

How many of you have read the South Wales Echo or listened to the paperboy, almost always an old man, chant his late afternoon song outside Cardiff Market or Down by what used to be Howell’s, not so long ago, when my world was so much younger and I too lived in a far-off land before I became a traveler. What sort of traveler, you ask. Why, a traveler in time and space, of course. Listen. Can you hear him? “Echo. South Wales Echo.” As regular as clockwork.

But in Swansea, everything was different. There it was the South Wales Evening Post, chanted by a paper boy turned old man who sang out – “Po-ost, Po-ost, Evening Po-ost, South Wales Evening Po-ost!” That double or extended vowel was a signature tune that brought on the evening and the turning on of the old gas lights that used to light up the streets.

Living in Santander, Spain, the street calls were totally different. There it was the lottery man, usually blind, who stood on the street corners crying out “Para hoy! Tengo para Hoy!” Today’s lottery. I have tickets for today’s lottery. So many lotteries in Spain. So much fun. In the laundry at the bottom of Perines, where I used to lodge, if your laundry ticket number matched the winning lottery number of the Ciegos – the Blind People’s Lottery, then you could claim a free wash that day.

So many memories. The past fading slowly away. The future coming ever closer. I look out of my window, and what do I see? Well, there’s always a bird in a tree, but today the clouds are building, playing piggy-back, and climbing on top of each other, reaching higher and higher into the sky and, sooner or later, there will be rain. Blessed, comforting rain. The gardens are dry. The aquifers are low, and yes, we need that rain. Para hoy – today – please!

And then maybe the desert will bloom again. The woods will flourish and, guess what KTJ saw in the woods the other day? You can’t guess? Well, I’ll tell you what KTJ told me – “I saw a partridge, then an owl, then two bear cubs, and the mother cub, followed by a third cub, and then a mother moose with a wobble-legged baby moose trailing behind …” If you ever see a mother bear with cubs – oh-oh, decision time, remember to make the right decision – don’t get between the cubs and the mother. Or you might end up as the Teddy Bears’ Picnic. And you wouldn’t want that!

And each time you meet a wild animal, you make a decision. To stop or not to stop. To take a picture or not to take a picture. To shoot or not to shoot – with a gun this time [nasty!] not with a camera [nice]. And remember, Santa’s got a list and he remembers who is naughty and who is nice. So think twice before you make that decision – you wouldn’t want to end up on the wrong list at Christmas Time, would you.