I didn’t think to
escape the pattern of my life,
to step sideways from this game.
It took someone to say I could,
though I knew that instant
that I should – so
I headed out
to amble
about,
to find
myself
here in
this lane.
~
Now I’ve
imagined a
land so vast
that lies beneath
an endless sky, a town
within from someone’s mind
with roads that trace converging
lines to fields repeating rows of vines to meet
in timeless harmony, in symmetry as they designed.
~
But here,
another magic lies, in every
solitary house, in the separate
spirit of every tree, and the
gently waltzing
dappled light.
In a flash,
all sound goes.
I stop. I have seen
the house – its plain, clear
letters, quietly proud, spell PARADIS.
~
I stand,
a menhir
lost in time.
Behind stone
eyes, my mind
is veiled in fog of
childhood memory,
stories of sounds of
screaming carried far
across the parish, details
seen outside. How they knew,
with lowered eyes – but could not see.
~
Criminals can
scrabble to bury their tracks,
leaving little in the dust, as their world
closes in, then moves on. I know justice is
just an idea – but what a difference if kept? So
all know time can provide no final obscurity.
I have heard of hunters who did not forget,
and I begin to understand; where
shame is deficient, how humane
law should ensure such
perpetrators live
in fear.
~
As a seed scraped from a wall by a quiet wind,
I find myself walking away, through thickening
shadows under pines, up to a hill where
a warbler’s
call carries
over fields
and flowers,
clear in the
last of the
evening light,
where I pause
in respect for
Marie Ozanne. And on and away I go, as a
bat circles round and loops back, the blue
sky brushed across with trailing cirrus lines.
~
Deep in the night I see the white horse, the
faint flash of a light at sea,
the yellow lamp,
the sentinel
cat’s ears,
the broken
glass and orange
sun, the utter black of a
quarry’s water cut by a bird, by its landing
wake. A gull calls, waters wash the shores. The
sheer granite drops deep, time’s gravity
grows immense, the dream is
drawn down, and
disappears.

PARADIS is, without doubt, one of the finest poems I’ve read in 2020 and one delivers something more with each reading.
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Thank you 🙏 😊 – I was so pleased you enjoyed it. Hoping to write something again soon – PARADIS was one of last ones I wrote.
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