Category: Rituals

 

Newly found enchantment
ear bending
travel
art
nature
people
romance.

New romance: duopoly selfishness
1+ 1 = 2 : universal + unique = never before
or likely to be again
inventor : us.

Eager to speak of the other – always
others thought eager to listen – always.
Teenagers draw eye rolling and tolerance
middle aged second timers
wear excitement as fun house masks
ghoulish and artificial.

She was looking – we knew
had met somebody – we knew
was dating – we knew
and now
it
had happened
we were being told – brought into the know.
It,
was wonderful
amazing
exciting
spontaneous
constant
“you know what it’s like!”
“No,”
said the no choice listener and mother of 4
“ I have to wait for my kids to go to sleep.”

 

We had been friends for a long time –
early twenties, to late thirties,
from the formative years ….  to the settlement ones.
Travel,
mortages,
career precedence …. friendship survived,
until
decreased by girlfriendship
sidelined by courtship …… evicted by marriage.

Pride dusted itself down and looked around
much company – rejection is not personal –
a new Queen and a new court.
An almost decade passes,
memory becomes forgetful of when inclusion was.

The road is sombre. The destination serious.
Terminal illness. The final visit.
The last town before the hospice city –
Unnecessary coffee stalls facing the unfaceable.

images of past vigour align with platitudes of decline –
what to say?
It is time. Eyes not looking, cast the room and snag,
a familiar figure bent in conversation –
the friend lost to marriage.
He is surprised to see me. Too surprised.

 

Alone and lonely –
sometimes identical twins
sometimes hunter and prey,
I had never been less lonely
or more alone
but I wasn’t – not quite
thank God for Nicole. I did.

Assistant manger. Second in charge. No 2,
profanely uncomplicated
once brusquely exonerating sloppiness, as “ fucking incompetence.”
Generosity and spite
she meant it
saying out loud what everybody thought – but wouldn’t dare.

Always sympathetic
always a full and fair hearing
always a promise to investigate
always a commitment to improve . . . . if proven.

Understanding forms as diamond from coal
slowly,
invisibly
incrementally –
years.
Nothing ever changed
not one thing
politicians and promises and campaigns
YES…. we can
but not now. But it could. It should. It would. It never did.
Smart –
win win – I left her office satisfied, she didn’t have to do anything.