karma

the room rang with laughter,
full bellied, visceral,
side splitting, aching laughter
that snorted and guffawed,
roared like an old engine
gushing with renewed life,
the prodigal return from
years of banishment whose cause
even history had forgotten.

somewhere in the middle
of this fearless fit of freedom
the spine shivered, this time,
with the thought of he who
keeps count, and the night
will lie awake in anticipation
of the tears that must fall tomorrow.
For that is the law of the land.

The inevitability of certain exiles
will hit as warmly as the first rays
of the autumn sun,and the butterfly
that flitted with charming uncertainty
over the windscreen this morning in
the unsuspectingly routine drive to work
will be the memory of the day,
worth remembering but lost
in the traffic of expected misery.

windows

Silences pervade conversations
invade the intimacy of loss
the flesh bloats with fear and
expected questions have learnt
not to wait for answers
to define themselves,
and feel complete.
Slipping between the last word
and its utterance
the tedium of breath watches
time fall off its hinges,
stretching itself to go back
to less modest beginnings.

some say it is time to look ahead,
that a kind of positive future awaits.
outside the broken window,
a flock of pigeons flies
(in a seamless order that
can but be borne of chaos)
over a field of dying grass
bloodied by red cotton silk flowers.