Take one
Tonight I walked on the wood-smelling verandah;
in the treetops the starlings were slowing
their shrillness to an inconsequential whisper,
the geraniums giving out their sweet herbal smell
even after sundown in the late summer air;
boatmen were beetling over the bay, centipedes
out on some energetic inscrutable mission – and
I thought, this is my time. I don't have it
for long, and the way here was never easy;
sorrow sat often like a beggar under a bridge
darkening its passages and corners, and some days
it moves so fast, this time of mine, I can't catch it;
but whatever it does, while I'm here nobody else
can have it. They wouldn't feel its kick,
nor understand the gleam in its eyes – and I do.
©Lauris Edmond |
