He came as requested, bringing his skip,
with a gentle smile and strong limbs,
brown with wind and sun, though
stiffer than perhaps a while ago, the years
finally demanding payment.
We worked cheerfully, this stranger and I,
casually swapping stories,
fetching and carrying
old boxes and plastic sacks full to bursting
with past lives, pointlessness and dust.
It made a strange sight jumbled together,
Grays and Moscow and Lincolnshire,
these things the vapour trails
of promises that broke and fled, escaping
the inertia of busted love.
Then quiet emptiness, bare walls and floors,
the stranger gone with a handshake,
paid to take these objects
that we - young and vain - had bought, leaving me to
memories of love and sunshine.
Note: I decided to have a clear-out. To get rid of a lot of stuff. It was a strange experience, paying someone to take away what had once meant so much, what had been a part of the fabric of different parts of my life. I ordered a six-yarder. And filled it.
Probably best read after Remnants Of A Life - this was a transformative moment in the slight and ordinary way that most of us experience such things.
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Fragments And Reflections
PoetryPoems looking at everything and anything not in my other collections. Here you'll find life and time, wild oceans and lonely coast paths, busy streets and empty hotel rooms, wild concerts and late night writing. All just fragments and reflections, l...