The strings I used to believe I could feel
Are gone.
I have the ambitions
Of water:
Be around,
Go around.
And I simply sit, back
Against the beech bole;
Waiting for the night
When the centaurs
Will come to the valley pool.
Man hangs, happily distracted,
From a dream of smoke.
In another world; his
Friend is at one end
Of a fight-tense line.
Between them a woman whose
Skeleton is a charity-shop stool frame.
Across the smooth water
A thin stick holds up a man.
Me? I’m here; balancing unsteadily
On a reflection that shifts and
Cannot possibly be me
I’m not that colour, I’m not
That rigid, that tired, don’t
Look as old as the water
So faithlessly shows.
What ghosts will sit
These patient seats,
Drift along aisles, up stairways,
Gasp and wave,
Believe and tremble
When these crowds –
Distracted by the
Ticking of other clocks – Move on?
I am here,
Though not consciously invited:
Red-ghost guest
At year’s-end party.
I quicken mascaraed pulses,
“Rivers are the ribs of the land,” the
Sounding-wise stranger said, eyes twinkling,
“When you buy a field
You’re buying the water:
That it has to offer –
For beasts, for crops –
Or such as it will need.”
Three whole hours
We sat at the bar
While the four-week storm cold
Threw itself at our windows, walls and lives.
Weaving home – the worst for cider –
I marvelled at the fact
That he hadn’t paid for a round.
26/4/2013
Sunset road is
Empty again;
Only the hard bones
Of the river of stones
Tremble and flow,
Deep sea-bound slow
‘Neath the gallow-bridge frame.
…
This river was never blue;
Water is only ever
The colour of what
It carries –
Or what it reflects.
P.L. Higgs (Linz)
(16th June, 2012)
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