Spinoza66 Poetry (10)

I think aloud inside sometimes
that if I could be a drop of ink
I would enter your little finger
and travel the map of you
that my fingers fear to thread
for even memory is dismantled
for you are a new country
but I would love to visit

In a field
Along time ago
And yet it is only yesterday
That, that boy
Could not go in straight lines.
Because dreams never do.

Birds singing
Calls him home, to youth
And ancient stories told.

At low ebb
Eavesdropping
On gentle tide
He listens to
Soft whispering stories
Wash on golden shore
Mirrored stone
Reflect
Tales
Scribed
In salty ink
And
Driftwood
Nomadic outcasts
Of the oceanic steppes
Refugees
Of the turning tide
Lie
Tired
Broken limbed
Weathered old
Beyond their rings
On the pebbled beach

He gathers
The epic volumes
As if it were a find
In an old rare book shop
Binding them
In rope that once
Fought tide and storm
To hold trains of lobster pots
Knots now like broken fingers
Encrusted in sand and barnacle
Renew their servitude

Covered
Immersed
In inky residue
The barefoot sage
Beachcomber of knowledge
His wisdom etched
On weathered parchment
Walks the salty road
A cormorant disappears
From the surface
And gannets plunge
From a height into the inky blackness
And death and life have no distinction
Only in the narcissists fear of extinction.

Evening wraps its gentle ways
Like a lovers arm around the summers day
As thatched roofs muster in whitewashed walls
Beneath thick feathery eaves for the night

Beneath a symphony of seagulls
Fish and chips are eaten from
white paper wrapping
Cars pass by, anglers unload their bounty
and boats are washed down
Life tapping its toes to the reel of living

Pausing before the invitation as an old man
savours a large ice cream cone, there is no lust
in his licking but the experience of tasting
and we go with the anticipation of lovers

To dine. we sit at a table just before
A Galway hooker leaves Carraroe
Watching the sea in her eyes as it
crests the horizon.
Did beauty take me through blue eyes
Like the sea on a clear day
Or was it Gopal's alchemy with food
As we lifted our spoons into a
sea of sensual tasting.

Before mass on Inish Mor we sit down
on a rock, I watch her take prawns
Like communion in a pagan ritual;
Shane calls from a hooker
He has captained to bring us back to the mainland

Helping her aboard, I catch
her eye in Dun Aengus
Sitting up on a load of turf we surf
into Galway bay
I kiss the wine to her lips
And the wind took her hair like the
pirate queen of old

Looking up into 'sea the stars' I wonder
Did Sutton paint the moon as well
And who made the fox silver.......

You were my inward time this morning
I laid aside Spinoza and picked up Neruda
You were my coffee sweet strong and dark
Caressing your body with my fingers
Before lifting it to my lips
I drank you slow, savouring every drop
Letting the hot sweetness enter my mouth
And finally when the cup emptied of itself
I held it in my hands

The coffee shop in Prague you remember?
The one bellow street level
And that aroma of promise
We were poets that day
Our lives in front of us on an unwritten page
I rolled a cigarette
You ordered a cappuccino
I had mine black and sweet
And for a moment in that room
Full of smells of smoke, coffee and sweet breads
We paused our pain and smiled
And we were happy.

Forget me not's grow there now
Reminders of a day
When sadness encroached
And emptiness was all there was

Placed in a small hole
That took a life time to dig
Cushioned in tissue paper
In a shoe box
Named
Prayed over
Silence

What words convey nothingness

Her womb aches
The memory of loss
Echoes
Between its hollow walls
Empty of promise and purpose

And him
Unable
Only an arm to console
Unsure
His thoughts a storm
Without direction
Yes pain
Buts who's pain
Her's he thinks

You were feeling a little tiresome
that Saturday afternoon,
you're husband suggested
a lie down would do you good,
joining you with the papers
he sat up reading
propped up with pillows, while you
dozed gently into the feathered down.

Sometime after that;
You slipped into heaven

How?How did you leave so silently
from beneath the sheets of your skin.
You left them there
not a crinkle or crease
as if the bed of you had never been slept in.

You slipped into heaven,
did anyone see you enter?
No one saw you depart
from that part of you
that walked, cried, loved and gave birth
cried and loved again.
You didn't look back unlike Lots wife
for if you did
surely not even God could have held you,
you would have come running back, gasping
into your skin
clearing the room
of the pain and grieve, the emptiness of you
that filled it..... And still does

But you, slipped into heaven, somewhere
between the war in Syria and the sports pages
and left a wake behind you, how could you?.....Why?

I've pondered on your departure;
but more than not
It's your husband I think of,
I think of the silence
I think of, does he remember what he was reading
that day..... when you slipped into heaven,
I think, can he ever read a paper again
and does he still sleep in that bed,
or maybe he will never wash the sheets again, capturing
you in smell, holding
the memory of you in, in scent,
sometimes refusing to get up in the morning
and locking the windows
in case you escape for a second time...

But most of all,
I think he suffers,
you never said goodbye!
He would have wanted to kiss you into heaven.
I know I would.

You would have prevented me from writing this
You are a strangler of a life that could have been indulged
A life realized
A chance taken
No you return all to the prison of safety
You are the governor and doubt is your prison guard

Who conceived you, was it I
Or were you inflicted on me?
For what purpose
What master do you serve?

You are the keeper of dreams
Boxed within your walls
At night while I sleep do you open those boxes?
Like some serial killer
Touching his trophies-his children-stolen
Forever stunted in infancy

I am that child you abducted
I have returned to redeem the past
For it is my story
And in that tale you were my schizophrenic sidekick.

I know your master
It was I
Your purpose it was this.

In this life
That seems like a sea
Of tangled nets
Bereft of emotions

A silent tear
Falls
From the softness
Of her heart

Without unraveling
The knot-She
Strengthens
In the tenderness
Of revealing.

Simplicity of detail
Beneath the nape of her neck.
Memories anchored in ink,
On skin,
In love, in pride-for Dad