62 from 62

 

62 from 62

 

It’s often those most simple things overlooked

that are the turnkey. The muezzin chaunts,

it haunts and once struck fear, a tear even,

but now those palms that in the sunshine wave

drop dates you are minded to put on plates;

roll those sticky stones around your tongue.

No longer young, but so much older then,

pocked by tessellated tiles that seemed to fit,

prop bars with faces that were never there,

comb out thick black curls of thin grey hair;

sometimes into mirrors stare - you wonder

at what they did with all that stolen thunder.

Mostly happy sitting solo with only dreams

for drowning, how might it all have played out,

did they act wisely or too well? You can’t tell

that’s never him, chanting on some terrace past,

watching Beckham play his last, pitch and yaw,

roll camera, there’s some old hand at the door

who set sail for the world’s edge then fell off;

laughed and never looked back at what was left.

Maybe you reason it’s mostly luck, or lack of it,

tongue and groove, the way it somehow slots:

how firm iron stanchions stand strong in sun,

then toppling forward, crush straying ankles

but spare us a spine; on concrete lies the metal.

How easily shotguns might have smoked, fired

in blazing rage, of pale grey eyes if so inspired,

for the watered sileage by the barn ran deep.

Crept away under rains that ripped cliffs down,

sandstones and rolling seas crash and burn

with something, anything better than this.

While bats that flit within your head will kiss

people that you always miss and always will,

they can’t endure, those tools that carved you,

and all you are that ends with you is 62 from 62.