Sunday, February 24, 2013

MOVING PICTURES



Time to move the stack of paintings
from behind the lounge where they lent
like pensioners against the wall
clad only in a shroud.
No sign of life: all dead?
Time to rehabilitate or bury,
hang them or put them in the shed.

One was a rural scene
into which you might escape
on a morning when the porridge
has horrible lumps, the coffee is weak
enough to make you weep,
the rain sogging
the thin tissues of poor sleep.

Another has a badly broken frame.
Painted decades ago in oil
it’s of a Parisian boulevard
that he and she may have walked
or maybe not – if only just
perhaps a dream –
a painting for the lost.

A third, disheartening in its loss of colour,
was of children playing on a beach
in swimwear of the ‘30s. 
Does it really matter
which wall, which shed?
the fact is very simple:
the children like the pictures are all dead.

LORD, HOW?




Turquoise has visited this island and spread its table in a lagoon
of fish and turtles behind a coral wall,
nourishment for the bodies and souls of the dying.
The clearest possible skies invite speculation and at night,
beyond the moon in hiding and absent city lights,
the same skies allow starlight unimpeded access
to respond with more questions, deeper inquiries born of quiet grief,
to the questions asked by those whose time is short.

For this is the island of palliative care with cushions for the weary –
a slow and gentle ride (no speed over twenty) –
for those whose illness has taken command,
boats for slow rowing across quiet waters inside the coral reef.

There’s nothing to do without a mobile phone,
life without email. This is a place where slow cycling
and recycling claim the hour, mutton birds and woodhens and palms
indifferent to the passing of those on vacation –
two weeks, then home after tasting the disengagement of the terminal. 
The airstrip is not well suited for landing in a storm.