AUGUST COMING

...locate the nearest safety exit...
cabin crew ready for take off...
tea or coffee?
And so on.

Beyond that
this
sense of leaving,
of "having" to leave...

maybe to reinforce
the desire
and hope
to come back?

IN PRAISE OF DOUBTS

Your “But..and what if…?” got me.
At dinner, at the narrow table
of this narrow present.
After some silent spell
in the waves of the conversation.
I know your kind of question well,
for ages I have myself
refused to give up doubts.
I have asked and asked
despite life's
shrugging shoulders.

I think I know a lot about asking,
I have digressed by it on meadows and rivers,
I have wavered, meandered, lingered,
with questions I have silvered
currents of grass.

And now look, my doubts,
kites in the air.

Thermals are friendly with Ifs and Buts
up there.

YOU WOULDN'T SAY

but that was that,
how things cross each other...
oppose each other like
invisible eyes in the wind.
A vast trim.
I swam along the causeway
and it was like I half-remembered
or half-guessed in a dream,
the ripples went their way,
see manes
all running towards land
but the current underneath
pushed towards the open sea,
so distintly opposite.

I climbed back on the farthest stones
just in time, just in time,
before being gently carried away...
and that's the core of my diary for today.

PURSUED BY PAST RECORDS

In this violent pool of tiger’s heat
I had to leave home and walk the street.

Haunted by the hot air.
Its well known, ripe, stifling stare.

The stones steady and heavy.
The canal water looking like gravy.

I couldn’t go beyond a memorabilia shop
where I found the record album I'd never got.

Well,I had borrowed it for ages and drowned
in the fulfilling stream of its rhythm and sound.

Which had been evidently pursuing me
with the very heat's determination and glee.

I have just played it, full volume, I had to stand,
the interlacing solos, too grand.

I confess I even loved the stylus's screeching,
the past's tip I'm always beseeching.


The record album this poem talks about is 4 WAY STREET by Crosby, Stlls, Nash and Young. Obviously a vinyl album and that "makes all the difference".

I WISH

The gardens in the late June sun,
the light’s blinding bounty.
Shimmering sun’s pools on the grass.
The shine on the magnolia’s leaves.

A shine as a subtle joy sizzling
with the transparency of light.
Sizzling in and beyond me
I wish it could

blaze me away from any mood.

HALF SMILE

You haven’t stopped looking for the chance,
the same of that other age when in the morning
you left home with nothing to do,
a whole day ahead like an empty beach
when you could easily end up drifting along
feeling just lonely and bored.
It was the time when things couldn’t decide
whether to straddle or tiptoe
and steps wanted to be flavoured
while you tried the tune of a half smile
and the appropriate aplomb.
You rang that bell many times in vain
but never gave up hope.
And there was always a day
when you found them all in and they ran down
and left with you towards the beach,
then it was all talks, plans, wind and dunes,
the day stretched with the future,
a busy dog hurrying along sniffing driftwood.
One evening in the twilight
you found a heavy stump of a tree,
large and massive in the wet sand,
with green mould shining on burnt knuckles of bark,
the gorgeous cheekbones of chance.
Dirty, almost useless but you liked it
and everybody helped you bring it home.
That night you looked at it for a long time
savouring accomplishment in the smell of its salt.

And time has passed now. And you smile at that half smile.
While you would like all back in a lightning-bolt.

THE GRASS

Thick and tall after the May rain
it combed acres of glittering silence
overlapping myriads of margins,
our horses’ hooves were shuffling in its rustling
when your mare was scared by a pheasant in the deep,
shifted aside and bucked, you slid down slowly
caressing her flank, fell and disappeared
in the sea of green;
hearing wings still rustling somewhere
my horse galloped back on the path
skidding among the trees, then stopped in less
than a minute and there was only his breathing
and thick stalks swaying in the breeze.
You emerged eventually, unharmed,
and with soft steps the mare appeared
out of a sunlit gallery of branches,
munching a thick bunch, the length of it
on both sides of her mouth,
the dangling bridles covered in saliva and green
she advanced.
I sensed I could be all that:
jaws grinding the infinite
stalks that I want one day to cover me

and I will eat them and will be eaten up extended
in sleep and startled by wings.