1
There’s a poem in this
I’m certain,
the memory came while reading
the curtains
parted into hearts
of other poets:
a summer evening
sea swim
alone below the green
and red leather
-leaf flower tree.
I’d quit my full-time work
making either bread
or circuit boards
or ice cream
and I had opted out
of the woman’s vehicle
to walk it home instead
to build a stronger sole;
went barefoot
on everything
everyday. I hadn’t talked
for awhile, or walked
for long
the red Sumner
cliffs, and then-standing
township when I saw
the tide risen
to a level
I didn’t know achievable.
I didn’t know myself
entirely, either, slowed
from years of Substance
over
Conscience,
I’d walked it off, the
boot soft
soles, ran it on, in finished-line
running shoes
from clearance sales
until the health and clean
I ran to, lived in, cleared
my private
aerial,
and what I then picked up —
ethereal
offering sorts, terrestrial
Focus groups
and I’m not
the class inclined
to say that I was meant
to be
sitting out in
front
taking notes
and what I got
back didn’t put
anything in place
of myself, backwards
I hardly ever
did my homework
assignments
I mean, to turn around
from what light
mirrored, if a self,
even if it is an oddity
a falsity alone
with the determined
refusal to accept one
is the only quantity
in existence
where ever you turn
you are facing the front
and I would seem to fluctuate
between the two amygdala
a sense excessive to experience,
behind the eyes
expansive rippling a hellish
hollow depth
or a thoughtless perfect peace
I hadn’t knowledge
or balls of oxygen to dive.
so there it was, the simple sand
-coloured sea,
right up to the path below the trees
and I stripped off
to my cut short
polypropylene thermals
red and green
as were the trees
and let it hang
in water, peak tide
meeting up the estuary
a river, a rip
beside, shallow water
beach wide, weird respite
from feeling all the gravity
involved magnetically
to holding solar systems
apart floating loose in public
near the footpath.
Yes, Mark, quite accurate…know more..and no more!
interesting, these meanderings of the Self. There’s tension between the desire to connect, and to disconnect, I feel. But whatever – great writing