Red Infini of Strings, image by Daniel Y. Harris
THE FIRE
If you go to school the teachers
berate you
for your dress. They have no sense of
our predicament. The world we live
in
is a haunt of shadowed forms,
somewhat
difficult to explain to creatures
parachuted
in from a bright
and glamorous
elsewhere.
We have been left to fend for
ourselves.
The butcher who used to give us
meat has
moved from the
neighbourhood leaving no
forwarding address nor
any culinary advice.
The fire smokes; we are trying
to burn poems.
TO TEND THE TREES
They asked me to tend the trees
because I have “kind fingers”. So
I ventured into the forest even
though I was
frightened of the shadows that
persisted
all the day long. With me I took no
tools
only a small canvas bag holding an
eternal apple
and a bottle of everlasting water.
My mother
always told me to value simplicity
and frugality
and something else. Perhaps
self-preservation.
When I reached
the babbling
brook I knew
I had reached the heart of the
forest. If you listen
in the correct way you can hear it
beating.
I set about my work with gusto. Time
moves
more quickly when one is occupied by
a task
that requires total commitment. In
no time at all
I was an old man with no stories to
tell except
this one, which is no story at all.
THE
CABBAGE GIRL
The
office manager took me to one side
and
suggested I dress what he called
“more
appropriately for a gentleman of my age.”
This
particular day I was wearing my Madam
Butterfly
outfit; it fortifies me in the face of
November
gloom. This morning, as stars
clambered
down from the sky, the cabbage girl
had
come to me with tales of
another country
where
all the jobs were made of crystal. Should I
compose
my letter of resignation now,
and
apply for a new passport, or find some way
for
her “tale” to be confirmed? I asked the air
this
rhetorical question, not expecting an answer
because
none was needed. But the office manager,
standing
on his pile of dust, answered it.
THINGS
AS THEY ARE
My
new shoes were giving me gyp
and
the thought of walking home was
breaking
my mind. I tried to find a cab
using
the app on my phone but nobody
responded
- I was, after all, in the backwoods
and
not many people come out here.
I
could see the lights from the TeeMall
in
the distance, and in the opposite direction
smoke
curled up from cottage chimneys
built
in the previous dynasty. Somewhat bored
I
sat down, leaning against the trunk of a tree.
After
all this time you still don't get it, do you?
Indolence
symbolizes the captivation one feels
when
sundry emotions coalesce and you sense
divine
grace. And the lack of metaphor
signifies an acceptance, albeit reluctant,
of
things as they are, unadorned.
A
FILE
The
voice came borne on the wind ugly
as
a gravel-scarred crone. It was impossible
to
make out what was being said and, as
we
have thought so often in these years
of
ostracism and drought, we little cared to
know.
The voice was little more than an
annoying
distraction or intrusion. A file was
being
delivered, and so there was a lot of
waiting
around
going on. We couldn't
move
until it had been executed. If birds
had
been in our trees they would, surely as
eggs
is eggs, have taken wing. Then, unexpected,
a
shower of rain arrived, left a note, and
departed
as quietly as it had come. “You have to
make
your own weather.”
And little black full stops
of
flies flitted around my glass of red wine.
—Martin Stannard
