Poems

Gone out

Gone out

“She has lived.
Now she has gone out.”

And all too soon
I too will go out
and people
will be able to say
he has gone out.

Or not.
Maybe there’ll just be
a silence.
Few people know me.
Even fewer care about me,
know who I really am
what I’ve actually done.

What have I done?
Nothing, really.
Nothing at all.

But I have struck a match or two,
lit some candles,
and allowed them to shine
in the darkness …

…

and soon, I too,
like those candles,
will go out.

Commentary:
The opening quote, changed and adapted, is from Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim. I was reading it a few days ago, by candlelight, as we had a brief, and totally unexpected power outage because some idiot ran into a power pole on the highway below us and cut off our power.

Reading by candlelight is so inspirational. It brings back memories of my childhood in Wales, summer evenings in the bungalow, no power, no running water, reading by lamplight or candle light. The candle’s scent, the flicker of shadowy thoughts across the page, each word held for a moment or two in a magic, shimmering glow. I recall also the candles on the high altar, lit for midnight mass, and the church all a-sparkle with shimmering light, incense, and flowers.

Power outage – I often think they should be called power out[r]ages. Then I think of the war zones, rife with suffering, where power outages are only one of the many outrages from which people are suffering. “Man’s inhumanity to man.” Robbie Burns, I believe. I regret calling that driver who took out the power pole an idiot. Shame on me. I found out later that he was a human being, suffering, just like me, from the attributes of ageing. A heart attack took him and his leaden foot, dead on the accelerator, sped him into the power pole.

DOA – dead on arrival at the power pole, and at the hospital. “He has lived. Now he has gone out,” snuffed out like the candles I blew out when the power was finally restored. It’s so easy to relight a candle, so hard to relight the beauty of a lost human life.




Clepsydra 18-20

18

… as free as the birds
     a sky full at North Cape
          where shores retreat
               year after year
 
the big red mud diminishes
     under advancing waters
          sea-threatened cliffs
               undermined roads
                    houses
                         the lighthouse

gulls follow the fishing boats
     herring gulls
          blotting out
               sun and sky
                    above the reef

with its seals
     basking in sunshine
          knowing themselves
               being themselves
                    thinking themselves safe

kings and queens
     of their sealdom
          never questioning …

19

… an osprey
     sudden the swoop
          turned into a stoop

water shattered
     total immersion
          then emerging
               with lusty thrusts of wings

claws clasping
     imprisoned prey
          prised from the sea
               raised to the skies
                    up and away
                         murderer and victim

oblivious below
     the black horse
          with cart and farmer
               gathering seaweed

all of them
     having no doubts
          safe in the security
               of their roles …

20

… while lost in the labyrinth
      I searched for a thread
               on life’s loom

a thread woven
     by an unknown
          unseen hand
               a hand and thread
                    I could never control

yet one day
     that thread
          will lead me out
               from the dark

then shall I see
     the sun’s great candle
          beneath which red rocks
               wave and water battered
                    crumble

here at North Cape
     in a way that nobody
          can understand …

Commentary:

The osprey “emerging with lusty thrusts of wings, claws clasping, imprisoned prey prised from the sea, raised to the skies, up and away, murderer and victim.” The words are based on the photograph. A quiet day, somebody shouted, and pointed, and clickety-click, I was lucky enough to capture the whole thing on my digital camera. This one shot summarizes it all.

The stanzas (16 & 17) that precede this moment are available here. Clepsydra, the book, is one single poem, one single sentence, that rambles on and on. Each stanza stands alone, each poem (numbered) stands alone, and the whole book stands alone as a single sentence summarizing what I have seen and where I have been. Bakhtinian Chronotopos – my dialog with my time and my place. In this case, my many dialogs with my multiple times and multitudinous places.

Albert Camus lent me the phrase ‘murderer and victim’. ‘Nous sommes, ou meurtrier ou victime‘. Quoted from memory. I hope I am not too far wrong. My memory fades as I age. Louis Aragon suggested I borrow his line “rois tombés de leurs chariots” – that I found in his collection Il ne m’est Paris sans Elsa. Here, I have applied it to the seals at North Cape, PEI – “seals – basking in sunshine – kings and queens of their sealdom.” Intertextuality – texts talking to texts and recalling segments of texts within other texts.” Wonderful. Alas, I fear the coming days when the memory may no longer be so clear. ‘What will be, will be’ said the Osprey as he pulled the flounder from the sea and carried him too his nest in a nearby tree.

Monkey Visitsthe Chimpanzees’ Tea Party

Monkey Visits
the Chimpanzees’ Tea Party

Dressed to the nines in their gala outfits,
they have come here for the tea party.
Hairy penguins, they waddle back
and forth across the temple,
then lunge for a table with its jumbo shrimp,
smoked salmon, scallops, baked oysters.

Faces slashed from ear to ear
by enormous grins,
“Food’s free!” they say
and stuff themselves
regardless of the consequences.

Serviettes tucked into collars,
they scoff lobster and crab.
Birds of Paradise, subtle delicacies
flown in from half a world away,
decorate the tables.

There is something about them, though,
these chimpanzees,
gripping cup handles
between finger and thumb,
enormously pleased to be the centre of attention,
however clumsily they walk,
in their hired-for-the-occasion,
ill-fitting, black and white penguin suits.

Commentary:

Moo apologizes. He hasn’t painted any chimpanzees, but a long time ago (2018) he drew and colored this cartoon. Pink and Purple Penguin Parade with Grand Marshall, Princess Squiffy. You can just see the end of Princess Squiffy’s tail as she vanishes out of the cartoon, encouraging the Pink and Purple Penguins to follow behind her behind. Oh the joys of leading the parade. Not everybody wants to do it though, many are content not to lead, but just to follow. Perhaps we should have called our cat MacNamara. After all, he was the leader of the band. But I don’t think Princess Squiffy would rather be anything other than what she is – a princess.

This poem, from Monkey Temple (of course / wrth gwrs) reminds me of Parents’ Day at my Boarding School. After several weeks of scarcely edible food, the tide would suddenly turn. Thursday, prime rib roast beef for supper. Friday, roast chicken with all the trimmings. When our parents arrived on the Saturday, all we could talk about was the wonderful food we had been eating for the last two days. Cunning, eh? We all had to dress up for Parents’ Day. Sunday starched collars, collar studs and all, and nice clean Sunday School ties.

Tea on the lawns in summer – unforgettable. A marquee, in case it rained, but otherwise tables laden down with a variety of skillfully cut sandwiches, little triangles, with no crusts, followed by endless helpings of strawberries and cream. The boys served their parents, fleeting back and forth to full the rapidly emptying plates. One boys father, I won’t say whose, devoured 12 bowls of strawberries and cream before the headmaster call the son over and begged him to beg his father not to eat all the strawberries and cream as some other parents’ would like some also.

Griffin Hunting – not a typical public school sport but one in which my school most certainly indulged. Our school symbol – a griffin – woven with gold thread on a dark blue background symbolized for the younger boys the perfection of the Prefects. To Hunt a Griffin was to behave in such a way as to attract the attention of older boys (already Perfect Prefects) and the school masters so that one became a candidate to climb the ladder and become a candidate for Griffin-hood. Some of us, myself included, preferred the anonymity of Robin Hood and were happy in our chosen roles of outlaws in Sherwood Forest and agents provocateurs and anarchists. Not for us the gentle counting of innumerable sheep. We chose rather the perils of after-dark transistor radios and the joys of Radio Luxemburg.

I remember being caught out of bed one night, on my knees, in a corner of the dormitory. All the dorm occupants were squealing and making a terrible noise. This attracted the attention of Perfect Prefect Plod – and in he came, threw the door open, and switched on the light. “You!” he pointed at me. “What do you think you are doing, out of bed?” “I am catching a mouse, Prefect Plod,” I replied. “You are a nasty little liar,” said Prefect Plod. “There are no mice in our nice clean house.” “Oh yes there are,” I replied, and I showed him the little mouse that I had cradled in my hands. “Give that to me,” ordered Prefect Plod. So I did. And the mouse took an instant dislike to him and immediately sunk its sharp little teeth into his thumb. I remember Prefect Plod running out of the dorm screaming “Matron! Matron!” and the little rodent swinging back and forth and hanging grimly on.

Those boarding school days ended 63 years ago. Hard to believe, really, but I still have such vivid memories of them. And of the Perfect Prefects, gripping cup handles between finger and thumb, enormously pleased to be the centre of attention on Parents’ Day, however clumsily they walked, in their spruced up for the occasion, Sunday Suits and Shirts, with their Golden Griffin ties. I always think of the Chimpanzees’ Tea Party when I think of the special performances of that little lot ‘for a Prefect’s lot is not a nappy one, nappy one.’

Monkey Meets An Anarchist Ant

Monkey Meets An Anarchist Ant
(Memories of El Camino de Santiago)

The anarchist ant is dressed in black.
He has a little red base-ball cap
worn backwards on his head.
His eyes are fiery coals.

“Phooey!” He says.
“It’s folly to go with the flow.”
So he turns his back
on his companions
and marches in the other direction.

Some ants call him a fool.
The Ant Police try to turn him.
The Thought Police try
to make him change his mind.

Others, in blind obedience
to a thwarted, intolerant authority,
first bully him, then beat him,
then bite him till he’s dead.

Commentary:

I wrote this last century, no – last millennium – in the 1990’s, after walking the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain. I travelled alone, on my own. An incredible journey. One of the sayings along the road is that if you do not make the pilgrimage to Santiago while you are alive, you will have to walk it in ant form, when you are dead. I often saw ants on the lonely, dusty roads, especially off the beaten track, and they were all headed for Santiago, except for one or two, who headed in the wrong direction, and were cut off by their companions. From these humble roots was this poem born.

Looking back nearly thirty years, I am surprised – and rather shocked – by the ‘little red base-ball cap worn backwards on his head’. I aways associated red hats with cardinals and bona fide llamas from Tibet (Kim – Rudyard Kipling). It obviously has a totally different meaning today, but I was definitely not aware of that thirty years ago when I first wrote this poem.

I was aware, however, of that in human nature, that made some people rebel and some conform. The conformists were rarely able to tolerate the rebels. This was particularly true in the Monkey Temple where the animals are bound by rules to which they must conform – or else. Thus, our poor anarchist ant broke away from the norm, refused to go with the flow, and suffered an awful fate as a result. Moo and I have always loved the rhythm and alliteration of that final brutal line ‘first bully him, then beat him, then bite him till he’s dead.’ But Moo definitely didn’t want to paint that picture. He encouraged me to use the photo of the ants in the honey pot instead. And guess what – there were fifteen ants floundering in that pot of honey. The luckiest ones were the anarchist ants who adjusted their baseball caps and fled!

How many anarchist ants, I wonder, baseball caps of any color askew on their heads, have suffered a similar fate? Some things, my friends, we’ll never know. And sometimes, my friends, I think we are better off not knowing.

Monkey’s Clockwork Universe

Monkey’s Clockwork Universe


Some days, monkey winds himself up
like a clockwork mouse.
Other days he rolls over and over
with a key in his back like a clockwork cat.

Monkey is growing old and forgetful.
He forgets where he has hidden the key,
pats his pockets, and slows right down
before he eventually finds it
and winds himself up again.

One day, monkey leaves the key
between his shoulder blades
in the middle of his back.

All day long,
the temple monkeys play with the key,
turning it round and round,
and winding monkey’s clockwork,
tighter and tighter,
until suddenly the mainspring breaks
and monkey slumps at the table –
no energy, no strength,
no stars, no planets, no moon at night,
the sun broken fatally down,
the clockwork of his universe
sapped, and snapped.

Commentary:

I guess we normal human beings, not the monkeys who live in the Monkey Temple, think of this as a sort of mental and physical burn out. It can happen to anyone really. You don’t have to be a monkey. But if you live in a clockwork universe where you clock in at nine and clock out at five, and regulate everything – your eating, your breathing, your visits to the loo – by the tick of the tick-tock work clock, then I guess this can happen to you.

Escarmentar en cabeza ajena – a lovely Spanish proverb that means ‘to learn from the blows delivered to another’s head’. Much better to let this poor monkey teach you that yes, you have to take breaks or, like monkey, you will break down. You must learn to pace yourself, not to be put upon by others, and to look after yourself. Because, if you don’t, others will take advantage of you and push you to, and beyond, your limits. Don’t learn that lesson the hard way, by ending up broken, run down, and in hospital. Learn from monkey’s experience. Keep the key hidden. Don’t let other people see it, or steal it, or wind you up with it.

Life is hard enough anyway. Look after yourself first. And then you will be much better able to look after other people – especially your family and friends – when they need your help. A difficult lesson to learn, especially in this world of multi-tasking where too many people hold too many low-paying jobs and work long, long hours, day after day, just to make ends meet.

There is no escape from the clockwork labyrinth, you think. Alas, that too is true, all too often. But escape you must. Somewhere, Ariadne’s thread will lead you out. You must seek it, even in the darkness and the gloom. Once found, it will lead you out from the darkness and back into the light. And that is what we must all hope for and work for. Pax amorque – and blessings.

Poisoned Pawn

Poisoned Paw

Openings are so important.
They should be magnets
drawing the opposition in,
but sometimes they’re whirl-pools
dragging you down.

You try to hold your breath,
but you must breathe deep, let go,
go with the flow and prepare for
whatever awaits you in the deep.
Down there, it’s a different world.

Light breaks its black and white bishops,
and the knights walk a forked path
when not pinned down. When you lose
do you mourn for the simplicity of draughts,
or Fox and Hounds or do you strive
to establish, once more, your light in the dark,
down there, where no sun shines.

You are the glow-worm,
glowing where no light glows.
You are the line, the sinker, the hook,
the bait, the temptation that encourages
your opponents to sacrifice their own peace,
 to join you, and together, to swim, or drown.

Commentary:

My family didn’t play much chess. I bought my first chess set when I was ten years old, at Boot’s the Chemist, down by the market, in Swansea. I also bought Harry Golembek’s book The Game of Chess. I still have both the set and the book, seventy years later. Descriptive notation. Absolutely bewildering. I stared at the chart that gave the code names of every square and remained totally confused. I had to look up each square, from its notation, locate it on the chart, then move the piece on my board into the appropriate position. And remember, each side had exactly the same format – QR1, QKt1, QB1, Q1, K1, KB1, KKt1, KR1. Not quite a mirror image as the squares reversed themselves on the other side of the board.

I remember clearly the day that ‘Light broke where no light shone.’ I looked at the maze of numbers, and suddenly the pattern clicked into shape in my mind and I understood the whole idea of descriptive notation. Boundary Knowledge – you cross a boundary after days of bewilderment, and enter a new phase of enlightenment ‘light breaks where no light shines’. When I watched the film, The Poisoned Pawn, I remembered my own learning days in chess. Great fun, that particular opening. Do we take the poisoned pawn, or do we leave it? I will leave you to decide. But remember, it’s not called the poisoned pawn for nothing, damned if you do and damned if you don’t!

I used descriptive notation throughout my school days. I had one particular friend in boarding school who also played chess. We slept in the same dormitory, two beds apart. After lights out, no talking, no reading. Prefects prowled at night to enforce the rules. After lights out, one of us would call out ‘P-K4’ and thus the game started. We weren’t exactly talking, so it wasn’t easy to catch us. Every night, we played the game in our heads. A great memory trainer. Occasionally we managed to finish a game – not often – we were both too wary of Fool’s Mate and the simple early traps! Each day, during one of the school breaks, we would restart the game of the night before, from memory, and then play it to its end. We very rarely forgot the moves we had made and we virtually never disagreed on the board position.

This was totally unlike chess with my family. The grown-ups would all gather round the board. Their object was to distract me, to move pieces when I wasn’t looking, to remove (MY) pieces and leave me in a desperate situation. “‘Knock, knock!’ ‘Who’s that at the door? Go and look.” And off I would go to return to a battlefield that had totally changed its shape and mood. I would carefully reconstruct it, piece by piece, square by square. But I have never forgotten the black looks, the accusations of cheating, the fury of the old ones being beaten by the younger generation. In the end, nobody within the family would play me, unless I gave them a handicap by removing a rook or one of the bishops.

I didn’t discover algebraic notation until I lived first in France, and then in Spain. Algebraic notation. Each of the 64 squares had its own letter and number and, as a result, there was no way to confuse the position of the pieces. Staunton chess sets in England became a variety of different piece shapes on the continent and I often lost games when I forgot that the pawn had one circle, the bishop two, and the queen three, but they all looked like. Many a time I gave up a bishop thinking it was a pawn – oh that poisoned pawn again.

Now, in my dotage, I play chess against the computer. I haven’t played a live opponent for years. But I do have a chess book collection and I have played Fisher’s best games, and Fisher vs Spassky, and I have studied the Russians and how they play and think – very differently from me. And so, in my old age, I sit at the chessboard of my life, and I move the pieces here and there, and remember old friends, and how we shifted across the shifting boards of our days. So many pieces have dropped from life’s chessboard, but a few of us are left, and we move more slowly, but we wander on and on.

PS Moo, sometimes slow in understanding, offered me several paintings that suggested the aftermath of the Poisoned Prawn. When I explained the basics of chess to him, he said he didn’t have a chess painting he could recommend, so he suggested this painting – the correct way to teach. ‘You can’t teach chess,’ I said, ‘it is so instinctive.’ I took one look at the right way to teach and loved it. Here we go The Right Way to Teach! X – WRONG!

Hair Cut

Hair Cut 

Curly locks, wisps of grey and silver,
curve around my ears, cuddle my collar.
I stand in the bathroom, look at my scissors,
glance in the mirror, and start to hack.

I turn my head swiftly from side to side,
watching white hair falling, like snow.

“All done!” I look at myself in the mirror:
hair shorter, still sticking out in clumps,
but some curls still tickle and cling.

Not bad for front and sides. I still
can’t see the back, but if feels fine.
“Right” I say. “I’m ready for the show.”

What show? The one where I sit before
the computer screen and admire myself
before I click in the code, type the password,
and join the virtual meeting that today,
in the pandemic, passes for face to face.

Commentary:

Face to Face – Moo helped me with this one by allowing me to have one of his ‘face to face’ paintings. Thank you, Moo. Sorry I said you weren’t too bright yesterday. And we both got the singer of All Shook Up wrong – it was Tommy Steele of course. Also, as you explained to me, you may not be great at adding two and two and making four, and you may be unenlightened with words, but wow, when you add a colour or two to the palette you are enlightened and enlightening and dazzle people with the lightness of your enlightenment. There – hope we can be friends again now. I would miss your paintings if you withdrew your services.

And this is a Golden Oldie. In 2020, when Covid walked with us, I started cutting my own hair – hacking might be a better word – and I have continued to do so ever since. In fact, I have only been to the barber’s three times since 2020. Each time, the hair lay so thickly upon the floor behind the barber’s chair that we walked knee deep in the white stuff. Great fun. How the young lady made fun of me. Right down the middle of the back of my head she found a large mullet that I couldn’t reach with either hand. She found that so funny. Asked me if I wanted to keep it. Of course, I said no!

I remember those face to face on the computer days. At least we couldn’t catch Covid from an image talking back to us on a screen. I always find those online meetings so difficult and awkward. I love the awkwardness of that word – awkward. The facilitator always began with – ‘Now, let’s all introduce ourselves.’ What on earth do you say on such occasions. ‘Easy,’ Moo told me. ‘I always say “Hi. I’m Moo. I’m a painter.” Nobody bothers me after that. Once somebody asked me what I painted and when I replied ‘houses’, everyone lost interest and the facilitator moved on.’

I always get tongue-tied and can never manage to be coherent. In fact, I am neither coherent nor cohesive and I often fall apart. “Hi! I’m Roger. I’m a writer.” This always opens the doors and the windows to all sorts of questions. ‘What do you write?’ ‘Have you published anything?’ ‘What’s your latest work?’ Of course, if I had any sense – and often I have less sense than Moo – when someone asks me ‘What do you write?’ I should reply. ‘English.’ Or ‘Italics.’ Or ‘Greeting cards.’ That last would be as much of a show stopper as Moo’s response – ‘houses’! Of course, I could get really inventive and say ‘Bilingual jokes for Christmas Crackers.’ Another pet peeve – have you noticed how the French and the English don’t match up? I could have a great old rant about that one. But don’t let’s talk about Fortune Cookies!

And suddenly, we have strayed a log way from the act of getting our hair cut during Covid. But, like many diversions, the journey is often more important than the destination, especially if we are amusing ourselves! And I hope you had some fun and took some joy from my words.

Time Flies

Time Flies

… bends like a boomerang,
flies too rapidly away,
limps back to the hand.

Endless this shuffle of unmarked
days dropping off the calendar.

Hands stop on the clock.
The pendulum swings:
time and tide stand still,
do not move.

The print in my grandma’s house:
seemingly moving seas,
sails swelled out,
the ship stays firm in its frame.

‘As idle as a painted ship
upon a painted ocean.’

Our garden fills
with brightly colored birds
and red and grey squirrels.

Light and dark
switch back and forth
each day
a twin of the day before.

The TV screen hangs out
the daily washing.
Tired, worn out shadow,
their faces boring us
with shallow wit
and hand-me-down wisdom.

Time:
an albatross around the neck,
an emu, an ostrich, a dodo,
an overweight bumble bee,
too clumsy, too heavy to fly.

“Time flies?”
“You can’t.
They fly too fast.”

Commentary:

My friend Moo told me he was ‘all shook up’ when I read him this poem. I don’t think Moo’s too smart. He thought All Shook Up was written by the Rolling Stones when they went out moss gathering during the Fredericton Harvest Festival, but I said no, it was definitely written by Buddy Holly on an off-day when he was playing cricket. It wasn’t okay in those days to play croquet.

The last three lines come from an examination question in the General Paper, “S” Level, as it used to be. “Punctuate this sentence – time flies you can’t they fly too fast” – of course, they should have said, “in exactly the same way we want you to. Corrections and alternative versions will not be accepted.” What did they think I was? A mind-reader? I wasn’t. I was a teenager having a field day in the national examinations. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when they marked my paper.

In the biology exam, they gave each one of us a Brussel Sprout and asked us to draw it and tell us as much as we could about it. Of course, I ate mine, and I said it tasted a little bit dry and needed some salt. Then I drew a mess of potage, all yellow and green with chewed up squiggles, and added “That’s what the sprout probably looks like right now.” I failed that exam too. Didn’t even get a part mark for ingenuity, though the science teacher said I could have a glow of satisfaction. Very useful after lights out in a boarding school, I can tell you.

I can’t remember if Moo went to that school with me or not. I don’t think he did. I think he drifted into my life a little bit later. He wasn’t a painter at that stage, just a half-starved philosopher doomed to live in a garret. Of course, once he started painting houses, he made money. It’s amazing how many people will pay you for painting their houses. Of course, that was before they invented plastic siding.

About now you realize that I live in a strange world all of my own and a lot of people live in it with me. You, too, if you enjoyed reading this. Long may the ‘strange world of me, you, and Moo’ continue. I’d send you a penny for your thoughts, but they have gone out of circulation. I can’t even sing you a song of sixpence these days either. Silver sixpences have walked the dodo path too.

Love in Old Age

Love in Old Age

How do I love you? Let me count the ways.
I love you when together we start to write
for although you’re sometimes out of sight,
you’re never out of mind. So many days

we’ve spent sitting together at keyboards, tapping
at computer keys. Is this the way to please
each other, a choosing of words, a squeeze
of meaning into a smaller space, with overlapping

metaphors and images improved in ways
we never would have dreamed of? Each
to his or her own, we say. Yet we reach
out to each other over time and space,

not joined at hip or lip, but with energy and zest,
sailing similar seas, and trying our very best.

Commentary:

A Golden Oldie, the poem more than the painting. Moo is more up to date than me. He also thinks my beloved and I sit side by side, or at opposite sides of the table, gazing at each other, but not saying much. Hence his choice of cartoon – The Sound of Silence.

“Each to his or her own, we say. Yet we reach out to each other over time and space.” Sometimes silently, often with words. Silence is best – because as my hearing goes, what I hear is a mumble – like the rumble of the old Mumbles Railway – does anybody else remember that? The result of the overheard mumble is an inelegant ‘Eh?’ Too many ‘ehs’ spoil the silence. Don’t they, eh? What’s that you say, eh?

So, I am now having great fun reading a new word a day in Welsh. What a joy to pursue the language that was forbidden when I was a boy. I don’t have anyone to talk to, but that is beside the point. Reading, remembering, the old place names still there at the tip of the tongue – Brynhyfryd, Rhosili, Pwll Ddu. Each name brings with it a visual memory, usually silent, but sometimes filled with the cries of sea-gulls and the growling of corgis defending their territories. Whatever – what joy!

Fear

Fear

Now is the time of fear:
ice on the morning step,
a child’s slide on the sidewalk,
a parking space too narrow
for me to get out of the car.

Sometimes the shopping cart
lurches beneath my weight
and I clutch at thin air:
each fall a precipice.

An emptiness in the gut,
a tightening of the elastic band
clamped around chest and heart,
a chill through the bowels
in the washroom’s dark:

 a long night that threatens.

Commentary:

Things happen, from time to time, and seem inevitable. With the coming of fall and the threat of frost comes the fear of ice. All year round, the fear of wet and slippery floors walks beside me. I am very careful about how and where I place my canes.

Shopping brings the fear that someone will park so close to me that I cannot get back into the car. Shopping carts can be treacherous. In one shop, their light-weight carts always seem ready to tip up or lurch over. The tell-tale leap in my chest reminds me that yes, this can and does happen. I am ultra careful in that particular shop.

Oh yes, and don’t forget the diuretics that upset the tummy and leave one struggling for time, and space, and the right place. Such things arrive so suddenly. They make the night seem dark and long.

Funny how the same thoughts change shape when published in prose, rather than poetry. The narrative is the same, but the emotional impact can be so different. Góngora wrote about such moments, a long time ago, in the early seventeenth century. “Cada pie mal puesto es una caída, cada caída es un precipicio. / Each false step means a fall, every fall is down a precipice.” The fear of falling is inherent to those of us who age. It is interesting that precipicio (Spanish) ends in -ice, precip-ice (English). How many readers note such seemingly minor coincidences?

Accident or deliberate? Who knows when the shopping cart or the cane slips out beneath us and we stumble as the ground comes suddenly rushing up, with us on the way down.