Thursday 15 March 2012

Andrew's advice

 Remember you - your new friends -
like the ones you met
sitting doing nothing on a train
when you refused to let them light faces
with laptop screens – no – you waded
in with a few questions – ‘do you like
marmite?’ – for example - and let
them glisten themselves with light
of a new connection. Like a smile.
Remember you?

Monday 12 March 2012

Birth

 Did you ever do the same
as Andrew on that Christmas morning?
Sit up in bed, mouth dry from sleep,
holding a forelock of hair,
looking and feeling, slow, long and deep
for an old inner recess – gap between worlds –
so hard to access, where pulse can be felt,
and gaze out, blast
a song by the (eighty year old)
Sondheim – loud, discordant,
‘Being Alive! Beeeeeing Arrrliiiive!’
and scan round the room
awake with that sound now – and now with a question
profoundly Socratic, imp
of a stoat newly woken in Winter,
‘What’s Next?’ he asks and looks with intent
to urge out his question ‘What’s Next!?”
Well – did you ever?