you would be everywhere,

in every hidden face

behind gold.

I thought

I would have to hold myself

against touching shoulders

to know the truth

of a turning stranger’s surprise.

But that is gone.

I knew you too well,

seen too often,

watched too many times

as you moved away.

I have stopped

looking for you

knowing that I will know

if you cross my path

and knowing

that if I do not see

it is not important now.

So much I did not see.

Now I stand,

shelf-stooped and spine-scanning,

an addict’s restless gaze,

seeing all and finding none.

On your shelves

or on your table,

a book of mine.

I want it back,

to read of course,

but more to unravel

the weave we once were,

knotted loose and useless.

We have become the memories,

unannounced and unwelcome.

They move too fast and too slow,

soul-blocking hazards.

Uncharted shallows

hidden in the waves.

A sea of those who mean nothing.

Will I learn one day

to see you coming

and sidestep smoothly ?

I already know.

I have read you once,

and need not again.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.