a glorious … ?
It’s all pies in the skies and suppose this and perhaps that. Little lights in the middle of nowhere, under cover of night but burning brighter than sunny sunday sunshine.
How did i know i’d find you there, crawling through the back gardens of our minds? Perhaps we visited the same place when we fell into a lull of sleep last night. You knew of the cloying taste of earth crumbs when we chew at the wire fences distinguishing one man’s land from no man’s land. Surfacing from the mud, streaked and sullied but moving onwards, sating the desire to move. Carry on. More land to cross. We cannot stop the movement as much as we wish to deny the craving of pushing forward, of moving on. Force and decorum, they said. Force and decorum. You’ll get there.
I tire more easily now; each movement a little more faltering, each muscular stretch tiresome and languishing. I wish to stay somewhere. Anywhere might do, just possibly. Put a tent up, and camp out under the canvas of indigo wash and moon sapphire, each star a diamond in the midnight crown. A temporary home under precious jewels. One sunny night, you could read me their names from a book, and i could spend hours staring blackly as pinprick lights dazzle and blaze yet become blacker than soot. She’s still there. Fifth star on the right from the Northern sky, hanging under Cassiopeia by means of a coathanger and a strong grip.
Where do maps of the lights lie? Help me find her in the sky.
And you’ll think of how it might look. And i’ll dream of how it might be. It takes one second, one second and it’s all over. Years of waiting. Yet you can wait some more, can’t you? It’s not as if you couldn’t wait any longer. Because everyone can. Everyone could spend until kingdom come, quietly waiting, sitting mute, looking blindly at nothing. Nothing sees, nothing speaks. Nothing does.
The bay curves like an arm around this particular flatland; i do not know it well, yet the view cast in the mind’s eye sees it all in minute detail. The small harbour, the sandstretches, the rusting and creaking frontages, despondent to the point of dilapidation. The beestung hum of warm air. This isn’t perfection. Far from it. These are places of decision. These are times and tides.
What is for, what is against? It is almost as if clouds of pollen are sweeping across fields, swishing through each other but only passing on the breeze. The dusts and grains will overpower the onlooker, circled by hues of transitory air. Not opinion. Merely consequence.
Sum your parts together. Sew in your songs, your words, your anger and fire, your waves and sun, topped with a shy, wry smile. Cover it with the fabric of your shadow.
Could it be glorious?
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