Wednesday, February 9, 2011

No Architecture Can Forget / new poems 2010

A Strange Boat

from a house above a weathered bluff
i wave goodbye to the days that i have lost
sitting here perched upon the edge of the world -
piano notes like little clouds of almost melody
drift over me like sotto voce apparitions,
their grey voices barely audible in the din of dim lamp light -
brothers and sisters in exile, dead memories
of decades that have come and gone, failing me,
leaving only their vaguely familiar fingers' braille sting upon my neck -
trains pass in darkness carrying distant thoughts
along tracks that parallel but never cross a lifetime passing by
under waxing, waning moons and their whispers of secret suns -
daughters, gilded in their mother's askew image
and dreaming of a far off, feral, ephemeral father,
are left to wait in vain the return of his sure wind at their backs -
fortune finds a compass, a star, a captain, a sail,
only to drown in an ocean while looking for a raindrop,
our pride protests our own small failings then smiles -
nervous laughter forgets itself by dawn breaking fragile
and forgives the long black night her pining siren's song,
wipes away the softly kissed dew of never having done -
a strange boat, this Time unanchored, adrift, amiss,
found from time to time broken and battered in memory's shallows
where bon voyage is nothing but a goodbye clinging to a lie -
there, amidst waves of 'what was' still crashing, only splinters of regret
left to languish along with the days that i have lost
sitting here perched upon the edge of the world

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