The first time round I find
A man they left behind
Like a piece of litter or unwritten history
That no one could be bothered to tidy up,
His cracked brown skin, grey hair, stained clothes
Washed up beside that slab of stone,
Rain-faded letters
Struggling to save names
Of ‘those who gave their lives
In the Great War,
1914 to 1918’.
Numbers create a false impression of precision
Regarding the beginning and end of things.
A cigarette burns down slow between his fingers
Like a candle someone lit for him in church once,
A frown settles on his features,
Fighting to remember something that feels forgotten,
Something from back before he was even born:
Something, something,
Frowningly he frowns,
Fearing he never really knew, will never know.
He lets it go,
He takes another drag,
Breathing smoke deep into his lungs,
As far in as he can,
Sucks up all of it,
Eyes narrow to tiny slits and shine
(Or so it seems to me).
And I am walking Pickle and seeing what I can see:
This man,
Nothing,
Everything,
Now you see me, now you don’t,
Trying to describe it,
Typing words into my phone,
And my dog is chasing squirrels he knows
He can never catch,
He doesn’t want the chicken bone
That lies within easy reach.
Walking, walking,
Carrying on,
Shadows of leaves playing on the path
Flutter-burst of pigeons
Sudden taking flight,
Response to the disturbance
Of our presence,
Scattering like the breadcrumbs
That man, maybe, threw down
‘Frowningly he frowns’
What luck! What luck!
They flock-flew-landed, gobbled
And clack, clack clucked!
The thwack of a tennis ball being struck
Traffic exhaust backfiring, car-horn song,
Leaves rustling in the breeze,
The pigeons gobble-clack re-gather.
‘Flying rats’ I remember
Someone called them.
It’s almost, but not quite, as if we never passed this way,
Nor the rubbish man who might have tossed them scraps,
As if these birds who have no words, no music, no individual notes
Merely absorb us,
As if they eat us up,
No trumpet playing The Last Post,
No angelic choir, no heavenly host,
Climbing ever upwards
Becoming one with ‘God’,
Nothing for gravity to work on,
Sheer weightlessness
Without commentary,
The leftovers, the left behinds,
Gob, gobble, gobbling it,
Now and then squawk, squawk squabbling over it,
And then a brief commotion,
The flight of one bird returning to the flock
Like a prodigal son.
The second time I find
Another man they left behind like litter,
A battered, bearded man,
Asleep in sunshine,
Red-faced and swollen from
Beer and wine,
Seduced, perhaps, by siren’s song
Witches’ brew,
The usual poison,
Washed up on the park bench like seaweed
Abandoned by receding
Waves, a crumpled suitcase
Stuffed full of nothing much,
A one-off life,
Another soldier,
And that artificial slab of stone,
Rain-faded letters
Struggling to retain names of ‘those who gave their lives
In the Great War, 1914-1918’.
I seem to see
Tree branches stretching out, the arms of dead men on a sinking ship
Begging to be rescued,
Pickle still chasing squirrels he knows he will never catch,
He still doesn’t want anything
That lies within easy reach,
Flocks of birds weaving in the sky
Sufficiently distant for the overall pattern to be discerned,
They circle like vultures,
Screeching,
Above this tasty
Piece of not-quite-dead-yet meat,
Memento mori, memento mori!
Then when I expect it least,
When I thought my poem was already done,
A smile breaks out across that man’s red face asleep,
I’m still here.
I’ve not yet gone.
He sighs a sigh-sigh of perfection-perfect bliss
Happy, sweet-skin-honey-melt desire
Sweetly softly kissed by sun’s thirst-quenching fire
His ship-wrecked heart, this bliss, this kiss, this serpent hiss,
It dreams now and now
Waking in the arms of his one true love
Which was, is and always will be only
This.
Yes To All Of It 