In the Living Dawn
The day is like a feral thing, catching at my ankles;
Your voice is just an echo in the woods, lost to myths.
The chorus sings of somebody leaving, leaving without looking back,
And I, the blind man in the square, clutching at his staff.
Lines on your face scratched out in wood blood for ceremony,
Rituals half-remembered, scrabbled together in a passage
Through the trees, sheltered by the setting sun squeezing through
Gaps in the leaves, like gaps in our memory, like the wind.
Temperate to tropics, station to station, border to beach;
Colours are different across degrees of longitude, east to west.
The mask you wear for this sacrifice has changed from yesterday:
Now it looks less like your spirit animal; and more like you.
This isn’t serious business here – we’re just rebuilding
Myths that fled these shores so long ago, fearing for their safety
In the shadow of the new. I tap tap tap my way across the empty square,
Trying hard to remember what memory feels like.
July 28, 2012