I dreamed I was on a mountain,
not the top but a south-side cove
where a deer had grazed till a bear walked through
and disappeared in haze.
I wake in a land that is totally flat
out to the horizon’s curve.
The seagulls scream and the jackdaws speak
and the willows grow new limbs.
There are no snakes here, nor a need for screens.
It is civilised it seems.
The bear I dreamed of has grown up
and long ago it died.
The wind resembles zebras more than zephyrs
as it kicks its heels up heeling over schooners.
Shoehorned into a hovel in the harbour
this wind cleans house and rousts the sleeping souse
who’d crept inside decrepit and sedated.
Weary but aware and seeing clearly
for the first time in this century, with a grin
he’d forgotten having, he salutes the wind
that whinnies, kicks the door ajar and jostles
the man to mount it, ride towards the horizon.
He is old as the hills, he’s fanatically bent
although the world’s gone queer,
on becoming an ancient who some might think wise;
his failure here is clear.
His doctor’s retired and his priest has expired
and gone to Who knows where.
He spends all his mornings on diets and prayer
and his afternoons on beer.
His grandchildren helped him creep out for some sun.
He found their attention dear.
They left him outside and the winter was long
but it’s spring and he’s still here.
We are chipmunks, or we would be were we wiser,
dashing hither dither darting till we die.
We race telling stories none of us remember
how often they were told or when or why.
The wind stirs leaves we fancy are emotions.
A truth on Monday Tuesday is a lie.
We learn sharp nostalgia when we leave the nest
then forget that too that way we do the rest.
Café de Zwart, Amsterdam, May the 11th, 2010, 16 lines
Primavera, Edge of Summer
Of his rugged good looks, senility and death
compete to pry away the final pieces.
He is finding life less precious these last days.
He’s become, he thinks, a contemplative species,
a sapien now it so little matters.
The tatters of his reputations count
less stridently each shrunken afternoon.
His latest prides and prejudices dismount,
and he, unhorsed and fearful of the sword
that he brandished for three decades and once used,
takes solace in the autumn sun that frightens
his face this spring, and he is sore amused
at the quandaries life presents him, such as death.
He shivers in the arctic breeze that splays
the sunlight into shards of frigid glory.
He is finding life more precious these first days.
Earth Tourist 