And I look outside
smudging
with my daft thick fingers
the remnants of a dream
slouching at the corner of my eyes.
A new soliloquy
is forming, almost
what I would say to who and how
and what a beat down it will be!
Why is there a melee always waiting for me?
I am the most peaceable man you know.
On the other side of the window
are swathes of grass and
tall muscular trees
swept up by
the most gorgeous, most insane sunlight.
Look at them, squirrels
scurrying on the mossy green trunks
and buzzing past blades of grass
like cars in a hurry
they make it look so cheerful
and heavenly
(oh how I’d love to be a squirrel)
to live, to run around
and be bushy and brown and
shoot up and down
like a bullet fired from a gun.
I think I should get out
and feel the light on my skin
and listen to the twigs break underneath my feet,
chase squirrels (they never let me be near them):
the joy sometimes the life offers is irrepressible
(Was I trying to repress it?)
No, I find,
and I stumble and lose,
then forget that I ever found it !
Epiphanies are rare to come, even rarer to keep.
I think you have to reclaim
again and again
the evenings
the songs
the laughter
the magic of words
and standing still in time,
impossibly so,
even if you forget.