Futures

For Norma

Thank you

For sticking around.

It must have cost

A fortune

In time travel.

From stars yet born

Why choose this one?

I sent no signal,

But lived in trust

That telepathy works;

And natures not our own

Can feel.

The crater where you landed

 Seems

Great enough to hide an ocean,

Yet infinitely small;

Foretelling all,

In words

Unknown to language.

Recall

On the thirty-ninth step,

Mr Memory (for it was he)

Realized that nothing mattered

Anymore,

And that Winnipeg

Was no longer a city

In Canada;

That Tokyo had taken off

And landed in Alaska;

Moscow had become Vienna

And London had flown.

Time lay abandoned,

Its future unknown.

He watched the gulls

Circling,

Or thought he did,

Because the sky had fled

Along with the land;

The wind had given up

The ghost;

Nature lay silent

And, in some freak collusion,

Poetry had become prose.

Mr Memory

Left the world naked,

Much as he’d entered it,

Leaving no epitaph

Or forwarding address;

Just one more enigma

In infinite space.

Voices

The voice in your headphones

May be wrong

When it says the painting ‘breathes’.

There are no obvious signs.

The voice is blind:

It can’t see thoughts;

But nor can you.

Jumping a few old masters,

You move on:

A minute per picture

Seems too short

For a lifetime’s effort.

You are a masterpiece,

Needing no expert commentary

To prove yourself.

Back in the open air,

You sit, perplexed,

Consulting the day for answers.

And who’s to say

That darkening scene

In front of you

Isn’t some future Rembrandt?

Fire Circle

These faces joined by fire,

Resemble each other in a way

That mocks proximity.

A brief chiaroscuro

Igniting our fates,

Caught in this ritual

Of flame and wonder.

.

Redeeming this patch

Of common ground,

Where truth holds out a burning hand

Against tomorrow.

Odyssey

I long for an A-Z of darkness

Reason can’t sense;

Tales not found in brochures;

A land without memory,

Where real shadows meet.

Why wait

In this half-world,

Sifting caution for answers,

Flinging daydreams into a skip?

Let’s jet off to nowhere:

Tour nonsense; try on the hats;

Live as we mean to die, unknowing;

In some resort, where madmen pose as waiters.

Dream the impossible,

And wake up to breakfast,

Knowing love is absurd.

Clueless

That dark cloud passing could be a sign

Of thoughts drifting back

To the scene of the crime.

The clock says three,

Though time’s a mystery;

And the cops as usual

Are clueless.

Fiction won’t change your life,

But it could hold the key:

Pages lead us to truths

We should have guessed.

Days like this, I stay home,

With murder in mind.

Sifting remains,

In bed with PD James.

Untold Story

For Stuart

A friend reminded me

Of a woman long ago

In Brighton days

We called the ‘saucepan lady’.

Unkempt in Kemp Town,

We’d watch her hurry by,

Pan tied on her head

With coloured scarf,

Defying our student theories.

If someone asked,

We’d smile and say her name,

As if we knew her.

When they found her dead,

Some said the pan was stuffed with cash,

Though personally, I wonder.

What we can’t take with us,

We leave behind

For others to ponder.

Untold

I saw seven magpies

On a walk

By the ruins of an old fort.

That means luck, I thought.

The fort stares out to sea,

Waiting for invaders who never came.

The birds didn’t stir,

As if they belonged there.

They took off finally, three, then four.

Like omens, I felt.

No five for silver

Or six for gold.

Two should bring joy,

The old rhyme says;

Not sorrow, like one;

But seven’s a secret untold.