The Good Moment
It’s a small thing, only a small thing,
but you will understand it – though you will want
to give it a name, a Latin name, as if erudition
will justify the miracle. If you don’t know its name,
there will be a panic: you will start going through the alphabet,
as proof against senility. Or will heap the green encyclopedia
onto your lap, lick the corners of its pages, seek out
‘shrubs, perennials, annuals with a blue flower’.
But it’s happiness all the same, even though we say it
with different words. And we sit together for a space,
watch the blue flower wave its bells – dark blue on light blue –
against the sun, catch their good moment. We know it won’t last,
for you will be off with your secateurs making neatness,
clattering tea things, being my mother, and I will be playing
the unruly son, fidgetting with a key ring, thinking of lists
of undone things that I have to do elsewhere.
but you will understand it – though you will want
to give it a name, a Latin name, as if erudition
will justify the miracle. If you don’t know its name,
there will be a panic: you will start going through the alphabet,
as proof against senility. Or will heap the green encyclopedia
onto your lap, lick the corners of its pages, seek out
‘shrubs, perennials, annuals with a blue flower’.
But it’s happiness all the same, even though we say it
with different words. And we sit together for a space,
watch the blue flower wave its bells – dark blue on light blue –
against the sun, catch their good moment. We know it won’t last,
for you will be off with your secateurs making neatness,
clattering tea things, being my mother, and I will be playing
the unruly son, fidgetting with a key ring, thinking of lists
of undone things that I have to do elsewhere.
Page(s) 5
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