landing light

...who knows what we miss through not having spoken.
---Isaac Rosenberg.

what are we?
why do women ask questions?
who are we, then?
God knows.

after the rain there was a strange quality to the light, as if the day wanted to begin again. even the old church past Denmark street seemed holy, innocent, for once. a tourist took a photo and a few drunkards looked up; a strange girl whose hair was wavy brown with the odd strand of straying grey rode past me on a cycle, dreamily, and nearly fell off. seeing is believing, or so it is said.

the rain has gone so, remembering, you look down. at puddles and dark reflections. on the upper deck of the 176 a square of brilliant light is framed, slides away as the bus changes direction. a hint of colour and some faint images fly off into the nothingness. the ritual of departure. without a name. but a number.

light to dark to light.
words like love
dark words.
the slow movement of light across the tapestry
of your heart.
a shadow.
the clock.
the gaze, the gaze that doesn't vere
holds fast to the unspoken question
in your eyes.

~~~

'as a wanted man might slip over the border
and, believed at last, live out his days
hidden by a silent holy order.'

'like a man in his own book'

'it's a miracle I found you in all this space'

'I will know nothing of my life but its mysteries
the dead cycles of the breath and sap

I shall not know whom I loved, or love
now that in the random winds of March

I am nothing but my limbs. I fall
into myself, and the years numbered in me.'

--D. Patterson (Rain).