early one morning
I saw this horse
standing like horses do
because lying down would entail getting up –
all those long slender legs to organize
to raise its heavy barrel of a body
(not to mention the long neck
…..and that big head)
against the fearsome force of gravity.
Meanwhile the sun was lighting up the autumn leaves,
whitening and brightening the pale and acrid smoke,
casting long, long shadows
across the yellowing grass.
and later on I saw this hare
couched in the grass
(no, I didn’t mean ‘crouched’,
though ‘crouched’ would have done just as well)
huddled in the long green grass,
thinking either it was invisible
or I was blind
or both
so I was able to sneak up quite close.
*
The whirr of the shutter
and it was off like a shot.
I
then in the sunny afternoon,
strange for our northern autumn,
two families wandered barefoot
onto the sunlit beach,
doing what people on beaches do:
drawing with heel and toe,
geometric shapes in the sand
or
using inadequate buckets
and bendy plastic spades
to build Canute castles and moats
against the incoming tide
or
rescuing odd things –
dolls’ heads, old ropes, tyres;
sea-sculpted pebbles
so good to handle;
sea-smoothed driftwood
sculpted by Giacometti;
ancient bottles with messages for help
signed by Robinson Crusoe….
stuff like that…..
or
just gazing,
gazing out to sea
but not really looking at or for anything,
letting the mind free-wheel
like a bicycle
on a gentle downhill slope,
or
like Sisyphus,
standing, hands on hips,
watching his great lump of a stone
go rumpetytumpetytumpetytump
all the way
down
to the bottom
of
the
hill.
Then out of Tay’s curacao-blue
I saw this weathered mooring stick
rise from its own reflection and –
Excaliber minus holding hand –
impressively priapic
stand.
*
And now
when on my couch I lie
in vacant or in pensive mood
and find
only these pictures
flashing through my mind,
and sip my drink and reminisce……
while I grant that this,
remembered images, the stuff
of poetry, the bliss
of solitude,
may be for some reward enough
it’s not for me
so, like the man from Porlock,
please intrude.
——
davidstrachan611 