Ewart St.

 

I am able.

Yet I am quite unable.

My wrist melts sideways,

Just as the watch falls

From it

And another train passes outside.

 

Just as

I seemed able to walk, as on Wattletree Road I walked,

Glimpsed myself — I, it could only be me —

Reflected in the glass of a window

Of what was once an ordinary house

Now a surgery, for animals

Yet

I could not walk

Could not be walking.

 

These moments

Of clarity

That come

With words.

 

This.

 

These moments

Of peace

That come

With words.

 

This.

 

The sound of this.

 

 

 

 

The sound of this as it is typed upon the page, each click of the keyboard slowed.

 

 

 

And stopped.

 

As another train passes outside.

As another train passes outside.

 

And another train passes outside.

 

 

The disequilibrium that comes with want

With need

Discomfort, displeasure, dissatisfaction

Comes desire

Desire comes

Comes.

Desire.

 

And in the moments of emptiness

Those long moments of silence

Where only you remain

To hear yourself

Where only you remain

Heal yourself.

 

In those long moments of emptiness

Those long moments of silence

Into those long moments of emptiness

Comes the pain

Comes the stillness

As another train passes outside.

 

Into these long moments

The long moments

Into these long moments of emptiness

Comes pain

 

These long moments

Long moments

Comes rain

 

A train

 

Passes outside

 

Into these long moments.

 

 

There is a stillness in this sadness

(Or is it the other way about?)

 

 

Cycles of agitation and peace.

The disequilibrium that comes

With dissatisfaction — perhaps frustration, the inability to capture something that seems to jeer at you from the corners of experience. The moment you had, before it was gone. Had in your hand, before it was gone.

The moment that seems to jeer at you from the corners of consciousness. She knows you can never have that moment back. That chance at that moment back. She knows you want it. She knows you will chase it, will long for it, will snatch at and catch at glimpses of it and call them memory. The moment that you could have had. Would have had. The moment that slipped through your fingers, trailed smoke between them, upwards from a chimney pot. An Edwardian chimney pot. An Edwardian chimney pot that spikes into the sky above you. And you in the laneway. One of the laneways that you could have followed, a turn you could have taken if you had not taken this one in its stead.

The moment that you would have had.

Would have had, had you only.

 

But you didn’t.

You took this one instead.

 

You took this one

In its stead.

 

There are as many words

As mirrors

As paths unwalked

There are so many words

You could have had

Would have had

Had you only

 

But you didn’t.

You took these ones instead.

 

There as many paths unwalked

As scapes within your mind unexplored

As mirrors

 

There are as many mirrors

As chimney pots upon the sea.

 

As chimney pots upon the sea of sky

Where the clouds are sails

And the shops are ships

The chimney pots their masts.

 

The shops, the ships

Ashore

 

Ashore

Abridge

 

A bridge.

 

The shops line the street that bridges the tracks that hold the trains steady as they pass.

 

And another train passes outside.

 

And another train passes outside.

 

These long moments

 

Of stillness

Of sadness

 

 

There is a sadness in this stillness

(Or is it the other way about?)

 

 

Those long moments

Long moments

 

These long moments

 

As another train passes outside.

 

 

Still, there is a sadness in this stillness

 

There is a sadness in this stillness still

 

And a stillness to the sadness.

 

 

And the agitation that grows from the sadness, breaks the stillness, still

The train passes

Rumbles

With a different rhythm, no rhythm, broken rhythm

 

As another train passes outside.

And another train passes outside.

 

And still the train passes

Rumbles

With a different rhythm, new rhythm, broken rhythm

 

There is a beauty in these words.

A rhythm

A broken beauty

Broken

Beauty

 

The beauty of broken rhythm

With no rhyme.

 

There is a rhythm in these words.

 

As another train passes

Outside.

 

Before a long moment of silence. There is a beauty in this silence.

(Although it has gone.)

 

 

 

 

Was it the silence that had gone?

Or the beauty?

It was the silence with its beauty, latent, gone

 

Latent, potent

Laden

As blossom drops laden with dew.

 

Latent, potent, gone

— there are as many words as ships upon the sea

 

There are as many words

As mirrors

As many mirrors as worlds

Of worlds, mirrors

 

Latent, potent, laden, gone.

 

As many words

As mirrors

As mirrors, worlds

 

As blossom drops laden with dew.

 

As ships upon the sea.

 

Upon the sea

Of chimney pots.

 

Of chimney pots laden with dew.