Sunday, January 26, 2014

Robert D. G. Auchterlonie

Robert D. G. Auchterlonie




their whispers carried into the gossamer

spun then abandoned by death’s default

caught in the bleached gold

of last year’s late summer cornfield

that are now hollowed out flutes

playing with the furious winter air,

crystal ice collects, slower than we see,

shatters the brittle air of its

sad songs

faithful to the faithless wanderers

drifting somewhere between two meanings

between there and their

between two Robert’s

and neither is him

both with soil from different countries

stuck in the patterned print, clung to the bottoms of their soles

the precise accent, one of a kind, can never be recreated in a crowd

the phone rings out from the grave

before it ever happens, the sweet souring music stops, the voice.

the birds soar into one great swell of grey breath, the last you see,

rushing out into the oak

the curtain falls into a cascade of crystal faceted whiteout

the world, a vortex of rainbow, uncoloured- sparkles, sterling.

housed away from time, never so free as when we are first separate

a woman rinsed away from water

and its liquid to solid sublimation, another sense completely otherly,

what bothers, is, that I cannot remember where I placed you

like a key lost to the monotony of routine

your brass box was lost to the grass, to sameness

and the forgetfulness of seasons turning, turning

like a colour wheel, always out,

I became distracted, I forgot what if anything

the muteness of the dead, like?

was it flowers placed over your corroded name?

an ear cupped to the soil, to hear the faintness

of your story there, like a sense memory

instinct draws my fingers to my nose to smell the

orange petals of summer flowers

that were growing here when we placed you,

who knows where, into a sea

of sameness, of great neon green,

but there are always two meanings for one place,

the one we always know, is second nature, and the other forgotten.

and, there are those that want to teach me to hate vicariously, you,

you could be a bad man,

I know that now, but I soon forget,

when I remember your laugh, and how you held a pen.