COMING OF AGE

Your death date is but six years off.
If I live, on that day
we shall be united
by our common age. 

What will it be like
to wake that morning knowing
that this day was your last?

I would like to chat,
compare notes, to see
if you had clues to wisdom
picked up along the way
that I had overlooked.

In return, there would be
little I had learned
that you did not know -
the recapitulating errors, twists,
entwining turns of your life
comprise one strand of
the double helix
that then codes mine.

FATHER’S DAY

 

Twenty-five years of city traffic
have passed this bus stop since
and yet there you are – impossibly so –
your familiar hair and heavy
framed spectacles, chubby stance
that increasingly I approximate,
chatting as was your habit to a group
of three in tutorial diminished thirds
and easy vocabulary.

 

Logic says you've gone
so if it’s you
then logic’s at wit’s end.
If it's you what was our mourning for,
our ritual farewells,
contested will and testament,
the packing and pitching, the selling
the thanking, the struggle to set course
by an orphan’s compass?

What have you been doing?

 

 

 

 

 

AN OBSERVATORY REVIEWS PIER PILINGS IN CASCO BAY

The Portland Observatory was built in 1807 to ‘view the bay's horizon to hearken the arrival of ships in order to call workers to the docks to unload supplies and operate fish processing plants’.

Pilings:

Present ARMS.

Oh: I see you have no arms

military or muscular -

excuse my mordant humour: limbs

lost in the tempest of ‘12

or ‘28 or the fire

of ’40?  Perhaps

I overestimate your age.

At EASE:

We’ve both known decay:

I may outlast you

but eventually my feet of stone

will survive no better than

yours of Appalachian lumber.

Mark me: we will all fall

impotent in the final storm.

ENOUGH:

We do not talk much, you and I.

I suppose it’s our preoccupation

with our survival as we age.

But we belong together

in common time and place.

Yes. That we converse

at all is a satisfactory miracle.

BLESSING

After a scene in Gilead, a novel by Marilynne Robinson

                                       

I was walking from my neighbour's farm

one early autumn afternoon – 

practising mindfulness –  

and I turned in hope

that a retrospective glance

might show me a detail,

a fresh fragment 

of meaning for my journey.

The road was cool and clean:

behind me in the distance

were two young lovers.

The man turned, smiled

and pulled a branch

that overhung the road

and as his partner walked beneath

he let it go and so it sprang,

chilling her with remnant droplets

of the morning rain. 

Her shower was a baptismal blessing.

I had set out searching

for a renewed appointment

for my soul and found

in their liveliness,

in the happiness of her face,

refreshment, grace.

NIGHT WATCH

0230 MYT* March 8^th 2014

Something’s wrong:

we should be heading north

but by my reckoning we’re south-west.

I have a good sense of direction

from my years of sailing.

For an hour we’ve seen no lights of land:

the cabin staff have disappeared.

0430

Our direction has not changed

for the past two hours.

Passengers are restless,

hungry, thirsty;

no news from the cockpit:

are we on autopilot?

0530

I think a silent catastrophe

has overtaken us. 

I’m writing these thoughts

on my phone, and soon

I’ll seal it

in a strong container

I carry on flights

for fear.

0630

I wandered

towards the cockpit:

agitation is growing.

Knocking on the cockpit door

elicits no response:

it’s like the chest of a man

whose heart has stopped.

0700 MYT

I fear for the children:

their parents try to reassure them

but there’s a limit to stories,

an end to lies.

0800 MYT

Sunrise. I hope against hope

that my calculation’s wrong:

we will soon be out of fuel

thousands of miles from land.

0817 MYT

I’ll finish now and seal my phone –

my personal black box –

I am frightened now.

*Malaysian time