A Small Child's Bootie.
A small child's bootie half-buried in sand,
bright colours and animal emblem
like an exotic orchid cradled in my hand.
A group of giggling schoolgirls posing on a bridge,
nudging one another as they glance in my direction,
prim but seductive in crisp blue and white school uniforms.
A tiny hut, yellow lamplight in its window,
beneath soft velvet skies of twilight,
glimpsed through a grimey train window,
the hump-backed shapes of asian mountains behind it
like great protective beasts.
A young boy tending a rice field,
a flute stuck down his trouser belt;
small cows running excitedly towards a dusty jeep
bringing them their breakfast.
Scenes of life and intimacy just beyond my reach,
scenes glimpsed through a grimey train window,
hurtling through the day and night,
a million worlds in a collision so light and brief
no-one hardly notices it.
Moths and insects are caught up by the engine's passage,
sucked inside open windows and doors
and carried a hundred miles from where they were born,
battering themselves to death against impenetrable glass
through which now, the black night gleams
showing back my weary reflection,
every crease and age-line magnified
as if etched in ink...
A small child's bootie half-buried in sand,
bright colours and animal emblem
like an exotic orchid cradled in my hand.
Always just beyond reach
- is it your seeming unattainibility
that makes you appear so luminous?
Such beauty can only be written by Willowdown.
September 2007 copyright.
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