last peom before winter

Okay, this one is, how to put it nicely now, old and not quite so relevant, and it has been discarded again from the manuscript, but I still like it's sardonic esotericness (not a word I know:), and the meditative (yet poignant) gaps between action and reaction... I'm sure we've all been there, have an understanding, and I'm almost certain someone will rise above the din and find the flave of this piece.


while she’s eating Caesar Salad

Calmly, the water in her glass
glances at a pair of hands clasping
that blurred face. Everything unfolds
amid condensation and steam,
becomes harder to see.
Behind her architect-lips
the window in a small restaurant
stands alone, like a buoy
lifted in the harbour
beneath the sky’s derogation.
Stars begin to peel
the busy unnamed walkway,
a little broom comes clean,
sweeps the ghost in a grand view
that lingers longer than a wedding reception.
Is it her, hers? That hint of queenly grace,
a wiping of oil, flavour, from a fingernail,
a spear, an open wound?
I'm relying on a promise
that doesn't protest, a dream upheld
by the crisp hearts
of triple-washed vegetables.
Is it only the earth’s motion
that doesn’t evade emotion?
That passes the living into daylight?
Where do her eyes shift, her lashes blink?
On the inside, in that moment when
even the tiniest action is decided
she is always first to move, to face
the middle of a room.
She measures the soul
of every magazine’d myth,
the knife-edge of romance,
and a sandal touching her toes
abolishes the stained spot
on an old carpet.
She asks, what would be done
if I wasn't here? And her clothes
disintegrate from her shoulders;
her skin becomes earthly and mute,
a garden, an oasis, a zoo?
Perhaps the eyes of an anteater
are flowers polishing
another carving of this vision…
Where could I stare?
What petals will adapt the supple massage
of her blinking? On the white tablecloth
her bones do not seem real.
They are silenced,
like parts of a meal already discarded,
cutlery, vines, olives chosen
from the right branch.
Peace is only peace if she cannot
find an angel piling rodents
in the laneway: oh,
she says, those are not for us
to dispose of... To remember.
Her hands descend, intertwine,
becoming a distinctive touch
that twirls within
the grip of dour pink fingernails.
The promise of being
(and walking together)
has yet to render this moment
more meaning, and she conjures
her own fate loudly.
A moth, it flickers, behind her,
like darkness and a stake-burnt martyr,
or a child on the boardwalk
who begins to act the same way,
as though there is only an aftermath,
and no splinters in the wood.