White

White sky. My
eyes are dusty
dry.  I wish I could
weep.  There's a
drought drawn-out. I
might have wept when my
father died. White
blood. His hair
white, he was white, I
wept at his funeral.  We all did.  Now I've
wept myself
dry.

Rain.
The plants drink. The leaves
flutter. My eyes dusty
dry and I'm
heavy as the rain-soaked
sky.

Pilgrim

I knew that man
standing at the station

in his broad-brimmed hat
and his priest's frock coat.

I wanted to kiss him
once

before he was a pilgrim
in this place

where I alit briefly
to see him

leave in the gleaming
train to who knows where.

Remember

Can I remember     the tuckshop roller-shutters,
                               orange and lime Tarax bottles,
                               the packaging of potato straws
                               branded in primaries?

Icy-poles etcetera in the dim shelter-shed?
I'd walk along the wooden spine
rising between long slatted benches,
one facing the dark back wall,
the other the vista of asphalt playground
bisected by a column.
Like a tightrope-walker I balanced
from end to end. (No one clapped.)

Can I remember    blue and white plaid
                              small squares, was there
                              a yellow thread?
                              White collar, buttons
                              down the front, an A-line,
                              socks and lace-ups?
                              (Mostly scuffed.)

The long-gone satchel's buckles and leather
leave barely a trace in my recall.

The Lakeland dozen lacked
a bright gold-green and a pink pencil.
Later I found then disposed of a set,
tin and all, with that landscape printed on metal
the twelve dryish sticks would never achieve.

I preferred oil pastels.  I learned to draw
copying grecian profiles from my book of Greek myth.
That book I've kept through the dust-jacket went
the way of all paper.

Glorious Aphrodite bribes the Apple of Discord from
the kneeling boy, wonder-struck Paris.
Athena pouts.
Achilles in a long dress clutches a darling sword.
Cassandra clamours in the doomed temple.
Circe scowls.
The bird-women wave.
Patient Penelope weaves her perpetual skein.

In that minute

on that morning
the Elizabethan Serenade
floated from the living room across the lawn
to where I sat
observing the hydrangea and the high
fingernail crescent moon
white in the blue sky.

Rainbows splayed from the sprinkler-hea
like  the spout-hole of a whale
surfacing to breathe.