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Gary Allen

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Resort

 

There no longer seems any point
in keeping the door open –
I will close it now and be content.

Grey ashes are cold in the hearth
yet the room is warm with acceptance –

and there are still books to finish.

Time was never kept by any clock
but by an urgent need
to be in a certain place at a certain hour

that never reached fulfilment –
always hope, however frail.

Here I stand upon the stony promontory
with not a soul between the sea and the endless sky

out to the Ferris lighthouse and back
holding at bay all that emptiness –

the windswept dunes
are sad without lovers down from the city.

What a gift is the intense concentration
it takes to hold a thought in place

the abstract touch of breast or thigh

the hollowness of eternity
the sigh that comes
with the equilibrium of the drowned man.

And now Lord, let me be at ease with the small things -

the knocking in the wainscot
the faint fluttering in the sashes
the isolated heart of all this humanity.

 

Page(s) 146

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