Notes In The Margin

Yesterday I drove past that place
I used to live,
on the way home to you.

I cowered behind that very window,
afraid
of the world outside,
afraid
that it wouldn't miss me,
that it wouldn't notice
that I had vanished behind that frame.

I watched, through that frame,
others living the life
I could not live,
because I was
afraid,
I knew not of what,

nor why I had been exiled
to this penitentiary
which I paid good money
to inhabit.

There, framed in that window,
another lonely soul
gazed out at me, wondering
if I saw as I went on my way,
past this refuge of those
too young to have lived,
and those done with it.

From the Weekend Wordsmith prompt, "That's What I Heard."

Morning At Olderkessi

March 14, 2008

The clatter from the kitchen wakens
me, but I don't open my eyes.
Not yet.

The acacia outside the window
claws gently at the pane,
a light scratching,
and the owl, who's been there
all night, whoo-whoos one more time,
and flaps noisily off to find
somewhere to sleep through the day.

A cough, off in the forest,
as a leopard drags her kill
up into the branches,
and the chilling almost-laugh
of the hyena that follows
her, hoping to steal
a mouthful.

A snatch of a tune from the kitchen,
the sound of frying bacon
and the glub glub of the percolator
producing that foul black tar
the grownups need to get them going.

I burrow down further into the dark
warm Raymond's blankets, listen
as the superb starling settles
on the parched grass, screams
"Come see! Come see! Come see!"
The ibis laughs mockingly,
telling its friends of this upstart.

Down at the creek, already,
the kangas slap on the rocks,
and the women begin the song
of their day's work.

Far, far away, the train whistles,
and the sun warms my face.

From Weekend Wordsmith

Sticks and Stones

March 14, 2008

All day we labored
with sticks and stones, to build
this edifice to our own ingenuity.
A boulder rolled there, and a few sticks
wedged in over here,
and the rushing stream became
a still, deep swimming hole.
Flushed by our success and exertions,
we floated on our backs,
watching the red-tailed kite,
so far up in the blue, we knew
him only by him cry.

He tore it down with a single word.
Our dam was making his cows thirsty.
The afternoon amusement
of four boys was causing a village
a great deal of discomfort.
What was, to us, a quiet place
to dip our toes, was their pantry,
and we had withheld the bounty
which was not ours.

All I wanted was another story.

The Weekend Wordsmith this week reminded me of a tiny neglected cemetery on Nicholasville Road, right before Regency Center (heading North), on the edge of a parking lot. You can't quite see it from the road. You could even park there and not notice it. All that remains is perhaps 4 headstones, only two of which are actually still legible.

And one broken stone on which the only thing legible is one word.

MEMORY
January 26, 2008

Stepping over the tumble-down
rock wall into the past,
the chill of the wind
chewing at our fingers
and noses, the urge
to move on and forget
resisted for just a moment.

A few broken stones,
all that is left to remember
these lives.

John died in 1885,
aged 46.
Martha Tull, a beloved
mother, departed from us.

And this one, only
MEMORY
and nothing more.

Our three score and ten,
and nothing more,
leaving only

MEMORY.