Thin Walls
Have you ever thought,
How thin the walls of houses are?
But we sit in them like castles
Shelter like a cave.
Have you ever thought,
How thin the bone of skulls are?
And we think our thoughts are hidden
Safely cellared away.
Have you ever thought,
How thin the surface of the skin is?
But our hearts are closer to the outside
Than the span of our hands.
The Barn Dance For cash we played the staves of rutted fields And pushed the strangers to dance the broken boards of streams, Our spirit drawn across cold ripe Autumn stars and sharpened, Because this air we move makes others move too. The white damp cold that has kept Autumn stored until this October night, The same that wraps the cold hard apples in the fruit store, Green dust on the greyed wood boards, The string and movement as the lines of dancers thread and sew, Breath mingles coloured in rich trapped light of amber moments And the ochre wheels and throws. This night will not last however long it’s kept, buried in the cold store, As the heat of morning warms the same ground It will be gone, gone again. We were so small We were so small when for a moment we flew, the street passed my eyes for surprisingly long all was clear. Landscapes, seascapes, moonscapes a dripping, flaring paper lantern of a sun twisted and tatty spent lit whole counties There was not fear, there was really nothing. Falling, we flew, a rain drop into the sea we were so small in Pluto's wake knees folded in our chests we bobbed as asteroids flew past, how long would it last? To escape unnoticed, gathering all I saw as me, and yet… We were so small when Let’s Build a Boat Let’s build a boat, and catch the wind. I’ll shape wood planks from damp young trees Coax, bend and bind, nail, fix and wire them. You stitch the sail from thick waxed cotton, needle resisting, unfolding unyielding We’ll mix hot tar from the fencer’s pit, Coat skin on the ribcage and lungs that will carry us Watch it creak, listen to it move. I’ll drop the mast home and bind it with iron Hinge the rudder and rub down the oars. You thread the ropes through the brass rings to lash it, But keep the sail folded before it’s first breath. We’ll wait for the wave to lift and to carry us. I am only a mark on a page, a comma but I speak, I am only a carve on the wood, but I am I have read that Roma gypsies have no word for writing, I am only a mark on a page, a comma but I speak, I am only a carve on the wood, but I am I have read at Jodrell Bank a radio microscope listens to stars, strips away the outside noises, chattering planet voices, a microwave flowing, a drop down a thread, traveled for so long it’s nearly dead, but there it is to play back, microwaves heard once beyond our hearing, What noise does an ancient microwave make? I am only a mark on a page, a comma but I speak, I am only a carve on the wood, but I am I have read that poem comes from Ancient Greek , New Testament texts so to speak, using Poemia for crafting , like a thing shaped for purpose and lasting, could words uttered flow back up that thread? however long it has to travel, however much the thread of Faith unravels, could we be poems written on? God knows some are carved on, as if a moment caught is kept not sand on the ground in a wind but wooden blocks in the hands of children, inarticulate but honesty proven, I am only a mark on a page, a comma but I speak, I am only a carve on the wood, but I am. Even the bent dray horses of men who lifted and placed each foot to pull the work along,
the world came to an end
and my reaching arm
caught nothing as I fell
and left others darkness
unresolved, unabsorbed, apart
the curling pages from the opened spine,
I spread out my arms
the world came to an end.
Poemia
that the word for write is the word for carve, and we have carved away with our tongues until we can’t see the wood for the trees, the trees for the words, the words in blocks and so around it goes can so easily lie at our feet, lie in our hands, lie awkward on our tongues, lie awkward on our tongues
so knowledge could put Creation beyond our fearing
physical stories of the now.
Apple Picking
Some people say the past is a place it never rained.
But it did.
In tin tractor sheds by the tar pits rain was a friend,
it had been away for the summer but now it returned.
Streams of insistent crashes flood the gutters.
stopped to shelter.
Sap drying in the viens of hands like
pruned apple trees, lumpy, work-stumpy.
They rolled tobacco because they always had
and now it eased their bodies carrying it’s own weight
for the damp mornings.
Where did cancers come from?
The bad fruit, the wrong end.
Are they new that so few cared?
Too old to work or retirement from life it’s self
were not dissimilar.
Wash-tired cotton shirts, the sleeves rolled up,
sun faded skin, parchment to greening tattoos
and stretched so it didn’t fit any more.
The grunts and nods of hidden codes and part rehearsed conversations, the mutually understood things of a small acreage of a life.
A break in the weather, the rain suddenly distracted left for somewhere else and the returning sound
of falling fruit into tin buckets on leather straps.
Hard fruit.
Copyright G S Buss 2009