#755 - a day at the me

 

26.i.22

755

3.26

a day at the me

 

for David McAleavey

 

here it is

(I leave out the dirty bits, quotidian grotesque)

 

yawn, is it?

splutter and

note the light

 

first to side nuzzle in

(enough information, that’s all you get)

 

record of anything left of the dreams

(or say it outloud as if it makes sense)

 

stumble up, ablute

kettle on, vitamin

meet birds on the veranda

with ‘hello? who are you?’

 

to desk then translate, mainly myself

and what shall I become?  shall we?

 

so the stretching starts

come through the garden to there

up the path inscribed myself

with long ago lines

in gumboots mainly

pass the no-bend patch

and call tomatoes – rise!

(to tease them)

rocket too!

dodge hedging

clippers later

you watch out!

 

eye exercises, balance

thirty six sun salutes

might be with Mahler

it’s Bartok today

 

a certain amount of nakedness

as elsewhere winter trees

place forefathering

 

we’ve sung so far

see how day starts just where we are

 

my pumpkins hide

need plinthing

I say – marchfly, be gone!

I would brave the farmer’s friends

 

now here’s the dusting I won’t do

and for a moment, dizzy

I speak with the rain in a tank

and smooth a skin out here

 

but did I mention breakfast?

(best collected from the trees

and make their seasons known)

 

big questions come –

by what cowardice survived so far?

how here?

least of all, why?

 

and all around my country

(100% stolen before my time

I won’t give it back

but must pass it on)

 

so forth you see

twisted, I mean un-plumb

 

days, bits like a ladder torn

sky takes up

and I go too

to fly my islands where

 

clouds scraps, misted, lit

 

recline the chair and read

 

it’s like leaving a religion

all this race against the clock

 

across that line lies poverty

there aren’t the hours

let’s not go there

 

but having come along this far

I think you’ve got an idea how

 

all this time gathering

until I’m in the poem

that never was before

 

catch my scribble on the keys just so

and then I let it fall

 

check the weather

maybe attack the paper on-line

 

then ache and disown

still succumb to hunger

need more tea too

 

back down for another dose of the book

it’s Marcus Aurelius today

smug ruler, it’s alright for some

and also my Budapest guidebook

 

by now post-meridian – emperor at lunch

empress too

 

fridge lessening till once a week we’ll shop

 

now shall we say siesta?

into a novel, George Eliot

now centuries away

dream thread where left off

 

then to my correspondence

like an all-day sucker

whatever is never enough

 

a corner of the afternoon just for tea

all these years and still love milk

but never in the one cup

 

little driftily here

let other words in

 

the kookaburra conversation

all of this leaflit from far

then I am at home with love

it vanishes the afternoon

 

a turn or three around the block

see all-to-do

and leave it

 

and one of us must surely cook

and one of us wash up

 

there now that’s decided

wallaby linger

and follow – those ears

how do they do that?

 

last swim because it’s summer

(still winter piled nearest front door)

 

then the pepsi max

(‘black bile’, mum said)

habits of the creature must do the creature in

 

news, dinner, done

and Laura’s tingled

 

games time!

discs and coloured balls

 

viewing then

a little box with windows flies

and other worlds get in

there’s an hour reclined

 

and have we yet ventured in among strings?

perhaps and I forgot

days are full of forgetting

where I can’t play

where tunes are lost

and into the piano too

what waves of sea chord cadence come

the left hand and the right

 

these are just some of the hundred pockets

I have to turn out for the book

 

can you imagine going to work?

what splendid intentions hum the drum

we don’t have time for that

work’s play is all around us

and never gives us up

 

there isn’t a way

back through the day

but you will find me here

 

I am wonderfully stuck

slough the daylight like a skin

 

where I will favour wishful night

for all the dark it does