Rec.
There are days, of course, I don’t know what to say.
Sometimes it’s plain wonder, like this late sun
set over the rec against a full moon –
the interplay
of bare trees and our stilt-walking shadows.
More often though, come find me at a loss
as the future flatlines all around us,
rolling news
it’s easier to deflect or deflate
with the full range of absent-minded routines
our domesticated comity
allows for.
Perhaps that’s why I’m attracted to this
simplified landscape, with its single hill
and the looping path for runners, lovers,
and dog-walkers
(occasionally, all three at once),
taking in that sparse wood, a moated isle,
the municipal al fresco gym –
but largely
the blank sky and a rippling sheet of grass
fitted to each point of the compass.
The rec is a manageable arena
for tired thoughts
and on this ghost of an afternoon
it’s the ghosts I’m mostly thinking of:
how in the middle of my life I find
them crowding in.
Moon mirrors sun. Between them, long shadows.
The rec itself is a kind of mirror,
and if confronted with such things we are
known to pause,
looking beyond, to scan who else is there,
that’s just what happens when we’ve lived a little
and we have lived a little of what our
ghosts did not.
*
Screen Time
Petty relations with petty people in petty cities
—J.R.R. Tolkien on the Inferno
Like Guido da Montefeltro, encased
in lamenting flame, or Benjamin’s Angel
watching a single catastrophic swell
as the present itself is displaced,
you swipe through the posts, read the updates,
with a flat white steaming on Formica.
There’s a sound in your head – a roar, like a
joy-ridden Audi, or tectonic plates
grinding up against the gist of themselves –
and you think this world, everything which moves,
the tic and spasm on the screen which proves
cataracts of bluster, in frothing shelves,
is slowly going crazy. A cat pic
has quite recently called you a libtard,
so when you press to ‘like’, you press too hard
(even browsing feels psychosomatic)
and look up from the feed. Night has fallen
with a skyline so clear it is flawless,
all the stars ghosting in their bright solace.
After a moment, much is forgotten.
Yet the firmament’s yawning whatever
feels cold too. Distant. Creeping, comes the fear
and the music the stars would have you bear.
Everything happening at once forever.
