But love always moves each man according to the profit and the ability of each.
John of Ruysbroeck
This is the life: a pause for the briefest
rehearsal of someone else
at the back of my mind,
the soul friend
as the hollow of a bowl,
or how the house would smell
if I were gone.
It comes across as something
ancient, stark
caesura and the light that signs me out
from everything I know about the world,
the light of what could seem abandonment,
its weight and fit
like folkright, or good favour;
though, really, it’s nothing more than one last
courtesy imposed by ding an sich,
now that I’ve come to the end
of my picture book world,
hand-coloured field guides and several different
species of oriole, lost in the turn of a page,
foxgloves and that childhood
pink that doesn’t happen any more,
towpaths, a sense of occasion, rotation farming,
unspoken love, the seasons, alpenglow.
Some bitterness, perhaps; but, truth to tell,
I could be fond of anything right now
as long as it came from a place
that didn’t feel interrupted,
no question of what we mean when we say
familiar,
the print of sand or heathland on the skin
or how I have tried, in passing, to describe
the quiet, when a last train pulls away
and leaves me on the platform, something bright
and watchful at the far end of the tracks,
a ghost, of sorts, though no one I would know,
much like the sound a neighbour makes, coming downstairs
on New Year’s morning, silence on the streets
and every window
strung with coloured lights,
crimson and gold,
to tell the lives of others.