Time Out

A new month, a new poem. Hopefully the first of many.

Burns

It was divine providence, synchronicity,
Along those lines. Fate made me miss
The appointed time, we met by pure chance.
Not that that means anything of itself,
But my mind likes painting over cracks.

I signed my name, detailing my confession,
A dim-lit night of bad wine and worse blood,
Delicate serration –
Not that it matters. That was someone
Younger than me, unwelcome in my hearth and home.

We took hour-long excursions to quiet places,
The wood-sheltered rivers I’d forgotten
Becoming their own tributaries as memory
Worked its home-surgery, witch-doctoring
Tattered parchment to smooth river-skin.

Each meandering Charles, each low-lying Lagan,
Each Feirste and Quinobequin curved
Away beyond kenning, carrying ballast downriver,
confluences of babblings and rapids
Recollecting stony strands at my feet.

At this turn in the river, in this auburn-tipped clearing
Where cardinal and blue-jay fade to heron and gull,
I reach my hands into the clear-dark freshwater
And wash the stale blood. Tent pitched on the littoral,
Water flowing past us, on its way to everywhere else.

Thanks for reading,
Dave.