Voids Below

For that one moment

While making coffee

At the kitchen worktop

I was back in Anchor Court

Over thirty years ago

That once new place

Won’t be so new today

Those bygone daydreams

Have also faded

As dust indeed does turn to dust

Such that floor joists

Beneath lifted floorboards

Now come to mind

In a way that only my memory

Is able to conjure up

What was there is there

What it meant is not

What happened happened

And how it felt, did not die

But dust indeed does turn to dust

 

Days Like These

That Monday should be the day

As all days sometimes have to be

When the sunlight and the fly

Are encouraged to co-exist

Or that this day, or that day

Could be any other day

With the breeze through the trees

Making its own way, independently

That the dream should be so clear

You know, to be totally remembered

In one fell swoop

At least that is how it somehow seems

Of course many corrections had to be made

For who knows what past associations

Our dreams may, or may not, represent

Besides our life mistakes along the way

That Monday should be the day

For the conscious, and the sub-conscious

To fully arrive, within their integration

From the stocks complete with their chattels

Or, for that matter, that this day

Much indeed as any, or many others

Begins

With a few moments of our own forgiveness

 

Close Call

The mind at rest

Without a thought

For the two trees

At either side

Of the road

Without a clue

To the two road signs

One at each side of the road

Or the car 

Which passes by

Before leaving me

To let my mind

Be at rest

Be at rest I say

Down this narrow lane

Where to park

Feels like an indiscretion

That is, until

The delivery van whizzes by

On its way from nowhere

To somewhere else altogether

 

Squandered Opportunities

Down the road named thoroughfare

Where to go to

Why, whatever for

Other than in search of self

Beyond bodily behaviours

More than minds meanderings

Reason, for reason’s sake

In this the halfway mid-morning

No room to turn around

There is only forever onwards

Until you come upon a place

Which, without doubt

Is not the very place

That you had in your mind’s eye

Nevertheless it is, or seems to be

The very place where you have landed

But what’s that you say

Only for now, a transit stop

Somewhere on the way

To almost anywhere else in the world

Which, in and of itself

Would still not be the solution

For, without being at rest

There can be no resting place

 

Changes Of Direction

I wanted to be a flâneur

But now think dilettante 

Better suits my purpose

I wanted to be elsewhere

Though now prefer

To stay where I am

If experience is what they say experience is

Have I not already, in my sixty-eighth year

Had more than my fair share

If love, and truth, and beauty

Not forgetting soul, yes soul and spirit

If they are still in the need of finding

Should I not buy a bucket

Or an aeroplane ticket

And get on with it