Summer Blue

Alone under a chilling night sky
except for ghosts from the mysterious past
my mind a weft of love, loss, anxiety
and Janus, god of gates, and endings
I am trapped in that summer day again.

I turn from the lane through open gates
park outside our flat behind the butchers
next to a toppled tricycle, plastic toys.
The hot January summer sun burns my face
reflects from our bare yard, shimmering.

From the kitchen we hear our landlord
weigh chops, sausages, and innuendo
for women eking out their housekeeping.
Our hot voices, our secrets, we keep low
muted by butchery.  I stamp off, deranged.

I drive, crazy, like Donald Campbell
hurtling Bluebird across arid Lake Eyre.
When I return, contrite, I swerve and clip
those gates left ajar while I drank.
Our rooms echo, empty as a desert.

I resprayed the mudguard Summer Blue
but damage was visible under the paint.
Money, its scarcity, made us anxious.
And Love.  Not enough of that, either.
I scan iron galaxies hoping for a wish.  

 

Two Million Miles

Retired now, he listens to the wind
blowing dust down his empty road.
At nightfall he retraces his maps' miles
to when his heart thundered with hope
on still mornings, engine warming
then off, towards mauve mountains
that drew closer from shifting angles
electric air whipping his aerials.
 
Parked in a flat landscape he worries
over life's throb on alternative routes
undiscovered, inexplicable events
that his lying logbooks never witnessed.

A sweating arrow bypassing years
rage always just beneath itchy skin
he gunned past valanced hamlets
death-bound along uniform white lines
songs of bad luck & loss repeating.
After divorce he annulled his rig's name
sulked through multiple gear changes
Detour signs giving his air brakes wind.
 
The idea of freedom bewilders him.
He lays out his maps in their drawer
sees a black after-image of highways
the silence of all their intersections.



Still

In the still bedroom siblings shown
alike as a row of stamps
smiling like soap opera stars.
A woman on a beach resembles
a woman wearing a wedding dress
in another still room near a still phone
dust-framed on display.
Inside, fat albums assemble
those children line up grin to grin
like certificates of achievement.
So many counted candles, vanished breath.
On the radio, Callas, One Fine Day
his teetering heart a vase
in a house cluttered with echoes.  
 


The Incompleat Angler

When I hooked the scarred bluefin
nourished by my bait like food parcels
it plunged under the angled rock ledge
beneath my cold arthritic feet.
That line jerked as tight as a fish's arse
a phrase meaning mean from my mean past
I use among others to impress my sons.
My parental sins are not apocalyptic.

I angled the rod to slide my fish
all mouth & eye, from its sanctuary.
expecting it to unhook itself by magic.
I reeled it from under the acute overhang
reducing the angle between water & line
to avoid reflex jerking & tangle.

I saw its great head flash
blue & yellow where weedy water lapped
but my tackle, like me, was amateurish.
When the reel snapped off at the rod
I hauled hand over hand, panicky.
With my heart hammered & feet aching
that reel riled.  I was as wild as Ahab.

One son pointed out a speargun wound
healed over in the heaving flank.
Another filleted the old badged warrior
dismissing its big head & mean flesh.
When it comes to doling out praise
that one is as tight as a fish's arse.