THIN LOAM ON THE FOREST FLOOR OF THE TREES AT THEIR PODIUM

THIN LOAM ON THE FOREST FLOOR OF THE TREES AT THEIR PODIUM

Thin loam on the forest floor of the trees at their podium.

And the leaves flying around like lecture notes

and regatas of sulphur butterflies. Sorry about that.

I didn’t mean to be so wise. This is skin and starmud not bone.

It hurts when you touch it like that with a compass needle

and a blood transfusion for alley cats in heat

that want to get outside and look at the stars for themselves.

Meow. It ain’t me, babe. I’m not worth looking for

anymore. But I want you to take the window with you when you go.

Go. My name is Chernobyl. Fukushima mud pies

with a happy face that never smiles these days.

Not much anyway until I say something sweet

about being handcuffed by the rain like the tree rings

in your heartwood. I can tell the time by them. It’s late.

And there’s a blue hinge on the sky that makes it look

like the lapwing of a gate that’s lain in the vetch

a long, long time. Like a cry that nobody heard for help.

What can you say to the street lights as they’re coming on?

It’s open and private all at the same time?

The hayrake in the grass you spilled paint on

like a comb with a Jew’s harp made out of a thin skeleton?

Look at the tail on that one. A chandelier for rats

with skin problems you don’t want to hear about

before lunch as if lunch were some kind of dinner.

Eat. It helps the pills go down better like little gravestones.

Pebbles in a wishing well. What did you wish for?

I’m afraid of mine like a butcher’s wife with three blind mice

on drugs. Pulmonary esophogeal biopsy. The big man.

The Wizard of Oz in a ministerial parachute. OK

we’ll listen to that too as if there wasn’t anything left to say

but thank-you. I just met an oracle I can relate to.

Hope so. We’ll have to wait and see who takes me by the hand

at the crosswalk. Without a traffic light looking for

a manger like a prophetic fledgling. Or a baby lapwing

that plays on a Jew’s harp like the skeleton of a snake

or the rain plucking at the plectra of the heart

in cosmic water droplets and morphine drips. Tick tock.

We’re back to waterclocks fused to improvised explosive devices.

PATRICK WHITE