The clouds chasing grey

and fierce, over the canal --


a flock of starlings.

Passing Through

We are like two sailing ships
Passing through a narrow canal

Veteran captains standing  on our decks
We nod heads to each other

In acknowledgement as if to say
Congratulations on a job well done

The sails of our boats once taut now sag
A sign of the relics we have become

In our hey day
We were the top of our class

The envy of the fleet
Known for speed and cunningness

The scourge of the open seas
Few willing to take us on in a battle of the minds

Feared in competition
Avoided where possible

But alas like all things in life
There is decline and decay awaiting us

When you know the time has come
For navigating into the sunset for safe harbor

All that is left is to idle away time
Sitting on the sandy shore until...

Andreas Simic©

Taking my dog to the canal
Its tea coloured peace
Resting behind the town
He noses in nettles
Relieves himself on bluebells
As I eye the bridge's span

Towards its apex
Crushed beneath the roadway
A sapling reaches out
I look closer
Its lignified limb squashed flat
Emerging arthritic
Unfurling green fingers
In a  hopeful
Reaching last

I comprehend the wall
Council funded murals
Darter dragonfly, pipistrelle bat
King fisher, KING fisher!
Are washed over stone
Pale compensation
For nature entombed

Twisted complex feelings
swings to grandfather’s hometown canal, 
where the heated late summer sunlight burned off 
traditional peace and a quiet Canal Zone. 

Returning scholar
his granddaughter’s blood at his side,
imagine now the men who once amassed
the limestone locks to straddle the canal,
an obsolete image from 
an eldritch past.

Give the knots that line my spine
The milky film that clots my eyes
The pride that grips my jaw
To be suspended

Hair blown out in rat-tail haloes
By soft ochre dispersions
To bob, a boat returned
Plunged into the myth of algae
Nymphs that bring dimension to the depths

To be an oil spill clearing canvas
A gliding watercolor rag or
Submerged irradiant water hag
Concealed by a cocoon

The overhang where beads of light
Exaggerate the urban dream
Freed from the stingy binds of gravity
The filthy nihilistic scene above

Just on display way down there
Beneath the ziplocked airless sky
For passers-by to glimpse the paradox
This wilful tragedy of mine

Through a waterlogged trachea
Umbilical cord to godliness stretched
Returned to me mangled and sore
Drowned in the canal of Little Venice.

Ten years miserably passed before..."At last!"
Four eyes dizzely cast into blue and brown,
and four, no, six legs on the ground.
Wistfully down a park laid sidewalk, we walked
to meet one another, blissfully.

We walked inside the dried canal, a river of the desert.
It hurts that we go there, no more, to flirt
with the dirt and our companion... infinity.
Is it you with me as I find kin company
in the molecules of divinity?

Repeatedly, I go searching the vicinity and nearby
For anything with similarity that I can call you by.
Any tree, light, shadow or star in the proximity
of where we met that belonged to you and me.
Or a feeling of solidarity that I cannot see.

Son, don't let me now survive ten years expeditiously.
Destructively alive, left with the intangiblity of life
that we left at that decision tree at 5:45.
Repetitiously I continue to apologize,
but apologies won't bring you back to life.

Gliding through glistening ripples,
mirroring the milky blue from above.
Viewing the world side-on,
yet gracefully moving forwards.

Golden corn wave their hello.
The passing landscape rolls like revolving stage scenery,
painted by the finest.

She rests at her pilot’s will,
then moves forward once again;
gliding through glistening ripples.