And so I walk upon this stage of life
Set before this night of a thousand eyes
Sans players and bereft of drum and fife
My given charge to sift the truth from lies,
To extract from the ore of distant past
Some kernel of what the years ahead may hold
And though I know full well the die is cast
My gestures and speeches long since foretold
And I am content with the part I play
In this warhorse my fathers have composed
Though other dramas are now underway,
Sad and hackneyed things which I had supposed
Would proceed, my presence not required.
The director demurred when I sent regrets
And so that preordained was what transpired,
This life no stroll upon the parapets.

Storms seldom reach into this tarmac dip - but I find my chairs broken, wrong-angled and awkward, on the grass-struggle lawn.

Sun hides. The day still dawns and I watch. Copper plays over rain-dark wall, licks the plastic idyll of neighbours’ houses.  

This house (moss-tile, rust brick) sits at the base of a hill - A full stop to their pale-clad, block-paved lines of must try harder.

I don’t attempt to keep up. The drive boasts a warm rainbow of stone, a zig-zag flourish of green sprung with yellow -

A dormant hive. Project pieces. Puzzle bits strewn. My what-if imagination stung gold - Summer-soaked moments yet to fly.

Bad luck fills a brass horseshoe and the world sulks ill at ease - *****, unwelcome - between plimsolls and boots by the door.

They used to ask about the shoes. Now, as light pours over the sanctuary bell, I laugh at the ghost of their honey-glass question.

Your lover’s drawing straws without you, better bid farewell;
he’d never time for rhyme or reason, so it’s just as well.
Slip out the curtained window quick, the future winks and calls,
ignoring paths of pagan gods, where faulty footsteps fall.
Identify faint flashbacks, cloaked and clustered in a heap
and sort out those you treasure most, you need or long to keep;
Forget about the epoch past, which wasn’t what you’d sought,
pursue instead remaining dreams before they come to naught.
            Reflect no more on what it was he’d meant for you,
            strike out ahead where something waits, has sent for you.

The graveyard night is haunted still, it hovers where you sleep
recalling souvenirs amassed, the ones that made you weep.
The poets poised in dungeon vaults, now growing old and bald,
retrace their palsied pleas in dust, like those that you once scrawled.
Except for runic proverbs carved on stone walls ill defined,
assumptions will not dog you that you dare to leave behind.
            The fortune-tellers waiting at the moat for you
            read tarot cards while setting sail a boat for you.

The road behind is empty now, the sky is painted black
so gather all the wisdom gained, no time for looking back.
Forego the prophets’ prophecies, so tempting to pursue -
although they might be asked advice, they seldom have a clue.
Reject the secrets they reveal, enveloped in their guile,
which be betrayed between the tombs in ruins of their smile.
            They’re waiting with a fractured rule of thumb for you
            while beating on a perforated drum for you.

A sand-glass dribbles distant dunes, the sun dial’s shadow’s late,
so now’s the time for slipping through the open swinging gate.
A joker wild defies the fools to read between the lines
in search of cryptic radiance the future world enshrines -
“the days ahead will wake again like waves before the dawn
when picking up the pieces left behind a passing pawn.”
            A noble knight awaits to clear the board for you
            when, soon, a cup of nectar wine is poured for you.

And so there are things all about us,
Fine things at that:
Hills, perhaps gently rolling, perhaps ending abruptly
Courtesy of the ministrations of some indifferent glacier
Rolling in and then receding with equal diffidence,
The song of some unseen child singing inaudible lyrics,
All tinkling-bell-a-twitter,
Some grand art nouveau city tower,
Festooned with angels on the balusters, gargoyles in the cornices
And they are wondrous indeed,
All with their own histories to relate,
But imbued with the regrettable tendency
To all speak at once, with no inclination to await their turn
Leaving us flummoxed and forlorn,
Shorn of any way to glean what would be precious
From the ore of babble,
But there are those with a certain ear, a certain eye
(Though such eyes may be accompanied by lenses
Thick as the headlight on some ancient VW microbus,
Perhaps without even such limited acuity)
Who can sort such tangles, weaving them together
In such a manner where this cacophony
Becomes something greater than the sum of its parts,
New yet familiar, things we know as true,
As must be true, their presentation to us
Signaled by nothing more than a mere clearing of the throat,
The rustling of some smple garment,
And at such a moment we must proceed
All openness and open to all things
And thence govern ourselves accordingly.