The Absence A guitar string broke that morning in spring when you restless fretted, tried to remember my name. When I tell my sorrow to the moon, you smile, but speak not, we live in the shadow of your absence now. The Night Goat Through a sooty canopy, stars emitted light but not enough for me to see where I was going; fell into a ditch, so deep that I couldn't get up and spent the night fighting off giant rats. At dawn the canopy broke, like spider's web in a storm; when the new sun dried wild flowers a nanny goat came lowered her head so I could grab hold of her horn and she pulled me up. We walked to where the sea begins, but there we company she went back to graze in the glade; swam in till cured of my melancholy and a frothy mare came and on her I rode back home. Unseen As a cold wind stalks still sunny streets and shadows are getting longer, widows in black, carrying meagre shopping in plastic bags, are everywhere; I died in a strange town and one of those big hipped women in black, was my wife, but I can't remember which one. White faces locked in an untold grief, which gives them status and dignity." Look my lovely I'm here and no longer a memory" I tell a likely candidate." She crosses the street in a trail of camphor, sees me not; selfish she carries her dark secrets and grief in a stygian silk shawl. Main Page This site sponsered by