Clacking Home From High School In My Rugby Cleats
Clacking home from high school
in my rugby cleats, metallic castanets
clicking like crickets on the cement sidewalk,
battered, soiled, blessed. The anger
expurgated by violent body contact.
Knees, green, bleeding. Grass stains,
mud. My black and gold-striped jersey,
a wasp. I'd see them, on their backs,
perfectly intact, the filaments of
their black legs extended like oars,
delicate fossils of tv aerials,
looking for better reception in death
out in the open. Death, are you
still vulnerable? -scuttled lifeboats
where anyone could crush them,
the mysterious beetles, heritage jewellery
that seem to die for no reason.
An old woman drops a brooch.
Iridescent greens and pigeon pinks,
rainbows on oilslicks. Were they
scarabs of immortality in another life,
rolling the world up into a ball of dung,
pushing the sun along, little engines
with black holes big enough to sink it
like a cue ball, a marble of light?
Millions of years of random variations
in evolution estranged us. Was I
as much an alien to them at this
dangerous bus stop of a planet?
Unknown destinations, the seriatim
of a vague beginning elusive as a ghost
in the prenatal shadows behind us
the only bond between us? Or was
something against us both as
sentient life forms straight off the boat?
A common enemy that built a bridge
to gap the spark plug with light years
of stars firing us both up like a car
on a cold morning, lacquering its valves
with hot lubricants? I didn't look
under the hood to see if beetles
have blood, but they had life and that
was taken from them as mine will be.
Their coffins were open as lockets
someone had torn the pictures out of,
unrevealed secrets, maple keys of love.
[...] Read more
poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
