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I expected him to be pushed aside beneath a wall out of the farmer’s way but he was abandoned head down on a slope half over on his side looking stunned, not my fault I only had the one, definitely human.
Before he was complete he left his home on the mountain, ruled by eagles and the wind, to cross the ocean and reach the city, where he would be adored, caressed, become a man full grown, definitely human.
But he slipped out of line and cracked. I can’t explain how I arrived here from where I began any more than he can. Imperfect, broken, young, definitely human.
No one could heal his face frozen in a blind stone sleep. Slumped, feet up for the millennia to come, thoughtless as a rock, warm to touch in the sun, definitely human.
Lilian Sharpe married Ernest Thicke. Don’t name a child until it’s one she said.
Lilian Thicke made hats for all who could write a name on a cheque.
When I was a boy at school I wrote my name in my cap.
When I left I threw the cap out of the train window.
Someone walking in a lane might have found it and said
two words under their breath to themselves and the trees,
much like a mother whispering to her baby in the wordless dark, before dawn names everything.
I took your picture several times standing before the fountain veiled by fern-like dropping threads of water. I tried again, you by the harbour and the church, St. Mary of the Chain, framed by steps, columns, water, walls and boats shivering on the sea.
My father took a picture of me where slaves had once been sold. The film came back but only trees and the auction block remained. We fly like birds from frame to frame, I tried to catch you so you would abide like water, walls, islands, trees and chains.
A Moment of Attention
The barn built from boards nailed to a frame, like a boat. The purlins slotted into the end walls of the house still firm but the planks split, slipped. On an August afternoon the still air inside is cool, warm fans of light spread out in silence, hung with dust. The swallows which live in the rafters shoot out of the open doors to dive-bomb our black cat crouching and ducking on the porch roof.
A woman lived in the house alone fetching water from the spring. She stayed indoors and grew fat in the firelight, her face burning her back cold. I cleared a rats’ nest from beneath the stairs, it took a day to smash her bed and drag it out, a trail of wax inches thick led from the bed-side down to the grate. In the dump outside we found broken crocks, a spoon and big, green oval Gilbey’s empties.
After a hot day the roof cracks like gunshot. In the barn, feathery, patched broken, so light that it might blow away it’s easy to know that there is only now that life is short a moment of attention and be full of life and want to live until you’ve had enough. This is the easiest thing to forget.
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