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.
