This year
is still
thin,
tender
and green.
Hard
to imagine
the woody
stem, the
rusty leaf
fall of
next winter.
Who
shall I be
after
the unfurling?
After
the flowering?
After
the going
to earth?
If green
must be
the fuse
then
let it fire
the moment
and let each
ignition carry
its own heat
and shine
its own light.
And let
this be enough.
SOUND FILE
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2013 – behind and before
As 2012 becomes 2013, I still know nothing for certain beyond my need to love and be loved. A year older again and still seated here looking through the far pane of the bay window at the field, the fenceline, the distant horses, the trees beyond, with a forelock of bare twigs nodding across the quarterlight. Still wondering about time – the three-second’s span between breaths against the incomprehensible glacier shift of history and pre-history. And still the twitching and shuffling of this restless Self, trying constantly to accommodate its asymmetry within its asymmetrical shell.
But there’s a degree of calm now. Not tranquillity; certainly not serenity. More the capacity, maybe, to identify familiar landmarks this time around; the readiness to exchange phlegmatic acceptance for unreasonable expectation; the faculty to recognise the fundamental absurdity at the heart of so much of human endeavour and to find the cleansing humour in this. And all of this within a steady sense at last of those little nuggets that might make up the tiny bundle of immutable truths that pull me forward and those few exquisitely precious phenomena that represent constantly reiterating beauty.
Maybe at last, through the fear and anger that sometimes haunt me still, I’m able to love unconditionally, albeit clumsily and falteringly, and – even more clumsily and falteringly – I can allow myself to be loved.
For the time being, these few fragile achievements will do. Onwards and sideways.
