I looked to see if I had anything that captured the notion of escape. I came across these three poems, each of which capture a notion of escaping, but none of them are quite a vacation… 😊
Tickets Please
The pulse of light from passing towns,
through darkened windows,
disappears.
Her soul comes quietly to a halt.
Made of nothing, nothing can harm.
A Guard checks her ticket
and nods.
A tug and then the soft pull forwards –
onward her journey
into the night.
After a close relation had passed away, the struggle of her last days was replaced with a look of quiet serenity.
DOD, Wiltshire
Fire
His feet grown loose and small.
His kingdom all to ashes heaped about him
in his metal throne.
The walls appear to have taken a step back,
deserting him.
He nods beneath the hole
that grows above his head,
an iron chandelier,
an open throat
suspended by a dwindling chain of smoke.
He feels the draught between his toes like mice.
He coughs and nods and listens
to the ruby slippers
beneath his feet
promising, with their last breath,
over the rooftops
to take him home.
Prompted by the sound of hot coals settling in our old iron stove at home, and wondering what happened to that fierce heat as the fire burned itself out…
Wet Paint
A long-legged fly
alighting on the door
could not detach himself.
He looked around about himself
for purchase.
Nothing.
There was nothing for it.
He rolled around the cardinal points of each leg,
counting them off,
one by one.
His thinking, like his body, was becoming disjointed.
“I shall become a bird of paradise” he thought,
“a winged loaf!”
The legless compact pillow of himself
backpacking his way across the blue sky
on fevered wings to the Jetstream
and the strange creatures that live there,
airborne into eternity.
When I returned to painting after lunch
I found a little copse of crooked legs
as if a chemistry experiment had gone terribly wrong
and when the smoke cleared only their boots could be found.
A positive spin on what is clearly nothing more than a terrible misfortune for a daddy long legs.
Beginnings
Iremember the first time,
but I didn’t know then
what I know now –
that it was the beginning.
History gets written by people
running back on
and re-arranging things
under a spotlight.
And how, exactly, were we supposed to know?
There should have been a bright yellow fire hydrant,
some tap-dancing and a spot of rain,
a police officer and singing in the streets.
None of it!
There was no moon,
the park bench under the lamp post was empty,
the birds had to feed themselves.
‘You snuck around the back then ran ahead,’
is what you said.
‘You must have moved the chairs around,
when no one was looking,’
I replied.
We are standing in each other’s footlights now,
even as we bow to ourselves, staring up at us,
clapping in the audience –
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Maybe we are in the middle.
And maybe this is near the end.
When you leave this little theatre
we’ve created, take my wishes:
May your endings be happy,
and your beginnings be few
and may my beginnings
end happily in you.
DOD, Wiltshire