Return

Up here,

the boredom leaks through his gear

and the dust stops

its constant evolutionary battle

against his skin.

The cooler air

pushes web and pouch and pack

aside

and the turbines

drum the magic of flight

in subliminal statements

of mechanical fact

into his listening bones.

Banking over the drab squares

of desperate lives

divided by the stale and crumbling

grid of a worthless town

the sweat dries in the slipstream

and if he reaches out

he can feel the air gather itself

against his glove.

The innocence of a sandcastle

from here, but below,

the walls are cover and question.

The sweat and breath

of dashes to jam

a shoulder against the bricks

that separate life from life.

To sight along lines of fire

with weapons solid

and eyes aged

in concentration.

Waiting for the elongated second

when it all breaks away

and the boredom compresses

like a spring and leaps toward

the flat cracking noise

that draws the shoulder blades together

and ducks heads,

too late to change its destination.

Homecoming

The exile

shrugs his hometown back on

like an old jacket.

Hung unworn too long,

aging unused in the darkness

of living away.

Pockets full of changed memories,

the lining torn

and the life not lived

rubbing like a misplaced seam.

War baby

A war baby by choice,
but not your ragged terrified
road hugging, bombed, dirt faced
newsreel staggering refugee.
Not a many homed army brat,
with multiple schools of almost friends
and inconstant bedrooms
and fated participation.
I wanted war, technical seduction,
cheered black and white tanks
dust plumed and deadly
rolling across the fields of nineteen forty
long dead death dealers sitting straight,
propaganda valentines.
Watched parades and charges,
knew the enemy in his uniformed strength
and focussed fear and knew the attraction.
Played it too,
always the winner against
the younger brother nations
because history had left us clear on the score at least.
Behind our house the Golan Heights
were a meter high, grassy
and we rolled and shot and hit and lived to
fight other endless summer days.
In the ritually silenced news time living room
drab green machines quieted by voiceovers
jumped back from punched messages
that flew over desert and hill and
wrote history in flying stone and flame.
Or jungle expanded,
the slashing sleight of handfrom a deadly magician’s sleeve,
an earthward fleeing comma
punctuating with an instant ink blot
of obliteration.
I was a war child, and needed it,
until age sensitised
tough thoughts
and imagined hardness
and I felt the fleeing footsteps of fear
the unravelling edge of terror.
Now I watch, eyes trained and uncertain.

Forgotten

To stay forgotten

that is the test,

to not have memory

scratch,

the afternoon stubble of a morning shave

under a palm that wearily crosses the grain.

Or light,

floating before the closed eye.

Or handwriting,

calling with a voice and an accent and a tilt of the head

from a falling paper

in a book marked for reading.

To stay forgotten.

Gift

Some past poison,

dry and dead now,

while still corrupt

marked innocent eye and unwitting tongue.

Gifts are not what they are,

for I cannot take them freely.

Somewhere the taste remains.

There is always the lost second

between giving and receiving,

where I search for something,

a motive, trap, or misheard note

in friendship’s dance ?

Yet each gave, unique and rare,

unrecognised.

Now I run my fingers along memory’s shelves

and touch the keepsakes

left on my thoughts

by one lover after another.

Changes learned from another’s eye,

unwrapped afresh

when the effect fades

and perception echoes

a once familiar voice, unthanked.

Flight plan

Out over the patient ocean,

waiting for every pilot

is the circle

that maps his point of no return,

beyond which

the fuel that trembles in the tanks

will only carry him

and his craft

to a different end.

We fly further

no checklist

or manual,

nothing to tell

when the fatal point

passes under an innocent wing.

We fly on,

heedless navigators,

against all regulations,

waiting for the voice and the word

in the static of our hearts.

Game

Can you still play in a young man’s game,

when you know that they are finite,

when you know they no longer stretch

in a golden chain of chance

beyond your vision ?

Can you still play in a young man’s game

when desire is no longer the only

force moving you on,

when you know now that it was

always only the edge

of the steel ?

Can you still play in a young man’s game

when the sweat on your skin

tastes of late nights lost

in the darkness of

filling memory.

Can you still play in a young man’s game

when you no longer believe

in winning,

but you know what losing means.

Not passed on

Fear is the curtain

I would have drawn back sooner

from whatever lay beyond,

if I had known

that what will fade, will fade

by age or use or neglect

and light will cause your eyes to narrow

and their corners to crease

but so will darkness

and no-one told me

that memory holds flare and colour

longer than shade

and imagination has no gauge

for grins and laughter,

rescued after.

Country music love affairs

All those years educating my heart

in the lonesome lore

of hopeless dusty towns

and hearts beyond broken.

Records spun by my batchelor uncle

on a wooden-framed player,

uncoiled harder lives like a thrown rope,

never landing.

Another guitar player,

tuning on the empty plain of an expectant stage.

Pinned with a spotlight’s nail,

like a dog’s skull bleached and patient,

on a iron-dry fence post.

The high open country was inside,

and the creak of leather

and the scrape of sand

and the hard slow smoothness of brass before bolt

spoke in the night

as seductive as a snake essing,

across rock hot from a day without mercy.

Desperate complications and taciturn heroes,

silent agreement

that love was a killing crazy kind of choice,

unavoidable as a river ford

or mountain pass.

In the end the songs are true and life lies,

I’ll  listen and live.

Snapshots

Eight years or four or nine from now,

whatever length of time

separates daily knowledge

from passing reminders,

will you recognise me ?

Catch a snapshot of form

and colour and stance

that can only mean one other

and turn to say something ?

Or will the template have blurred,

its once perfect edge softened by time ?

No longer catching memory’s trailing fingers.

I’d know him dipped in treacle my grandmother would say.

Now she is gone from the list

of those who give pleasure

in an unexpected meeting.

Those where we savour the surprise

without the aftertaste.

Where the smiles of recognition

start conversation

seamless and soft,

no debate on whether

acknowledgement can be delayed

or denied.

Surprise me.