Sunday, February 8, 2009

INTIMATELY BLEAK SATURDAY MORNING

INTIMATELY BLEAK SATURDAY MORNING


Intimately bleak Saturday morning.

Dirty snow all over the ground

like fog that took itself too seriously,

like me at this desk here by a window in Perth

blurred and zoned out by the greyness of everything

as if all these soft forms saturated with space

and arrayed before me were just

more of the habits of life,

smoke from the hilltop watchfires

warning of another approaching desire

dipping its candles in a black mass.

I keep coming to these intersections of life

where any road’s as good as any other

and I stand in a moment of realized stillness

wanting to want something again,

for one direction to seem more urgent than the rest.

But I don’t mean to sound as if

I’m just a voice and a breath shy of the urn;

I’m not; I still burn, but the fire lives on nothing

and though I am forever transformed

into people it takes me a while to get to know,

I am never consumed.


PATRICK WHITE