Again Thinking

18 April 2006

A regular thing. Every now and then life stops and is rerun, sometimes lazily most often frenetically, to see if something has been missed. Sometimes again thinking is instantaneous, flashing lights and not much else. Other times deep dark thoughts replay what's been and could have been.

Wrote a poem once when I was young


again thinking

in sunburnt youth, already old in thought
we bought from evenings only darkness
love, risen too early, eclipsed without warning

when others played unconcerned in rain,
there was for us only sombre avenues walking
by themselves, enmeshed by overhead branches
that locked their arms against the sun

today we talk of old love, already uncaring
like old men remembering the patches
branches netted against coming light,
while those first thoughts of love fence
against the calm words spoken, goodbye

we talk of the sea, that echo, lost voice
claiming its hurts for our shoreline, its tears
for our eyes, adoring the violence of waves
against the rocks of our hearts.
we talk of the sky, that mute artist
whose brushes we wield to paint
this deepening darkness into our lives

one day we will have to return the sea
its voice, the sky its colours.
one day we will have to find the sea and sky
in another human face


( from Once the Horsemen and Other Poems, 1972)

Thirty four years ago, I did.