Wednesday 21 August 2013

An afternoon with Visions:



 Page ready and empty -
 hands fiddle with the ribbon,
 a yarn tangled around the steadfast ‘Z/z’.

 My mind pretends a search
 but truthfully conjures visions
 of your straight spine: imagines the steel rod
 implanted within to keep it straight,
 and your perfect breasts and nipples
 seen whilst performing a Louis Nowra play
 titled ‘Visions’ in which you played my sister
 though secretly I was never your brother.

 We lay together, another sunny afternoon -
 but not fully together;
 the journey never went so far, words and time
 seem to make us stumble and splutter
 like a fire that almost catches
 yet for reasons unexplained does not.

 Now another afternoon
 I sit at this computer writing words
 that somehow have the shape, these years later,
 of the underside of your ‘b’ breast,
 the gentle curve of your ‘l’ neck,
 of your thin, soft ‘m’ lips
 and long, long gently clasping ‘w’ fingers.

 This ‘s’ is your bent leg, the knee a valley of ‘v’,
 this ‘o’ a cheek soft as a baby;
 a remembered smell sends me reeling
 into that almost moment so long ago.


 I wonder these 27 years later
 what has happened to you and that steel rod
 or your sea green eyes
 and utterly sad heart that would not let go
 to come a’ journeying with me
 on a sunny afternoon similar and almost different
 from any other and I wish, as I have some times other,
 that I might have had the courage to face your temper
 and in its tempest shout like an undaunted sailor
 the ‘I love you’ that dwelt in my heart
 that moment, on that particular afternoon.

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