Poetry Month #25

 Goodness me. Twenty-five sessions around the Campfire. Tonight seems colder than most previous nights here. Perhaps it's the spaces where there should be people; absence carries a surprising weight.

The half-moon tonight reminds me of an antique saki bowl I drank from once on my first trip to Japan.

Two poems, caught at separate times perhaps years apart; each randomly transcribed into a notebook, find themselves next to each other. And I turn to them, by chance, tonight. 

Slowly, Here in Essaouira by Matt Hetherington

a peace is descending upon me

the noisy children don't bother me so much

and things get done, one at a time

even the harsh northern wind

which dries the lips and makes the shutters shudder - 

even that passes over my discontent

instead of through and into my organs

on the second floor, in room no. 4

I eat my bread and honey and oranges

and drink the water and sleep

as much as my memories allow me

then I rise into the day

when finally I am ready

and the world gives a little and I give back

.............................................

(Essaouira is a port city in Morocco; a bit of a hippie hangout in the 1960s.)

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Missed Time by Ha Jin

My notebook has remained blank for months

thanks to the light that you shower

around me. I have no use

for my pen, which lies

languorously without grief.

Nothing is better than to live

a storyless life that needs

no writing for meaning - 

when I am gone, let others say

they lost a happy man,

though no-one can tell how happy I was.

.............................................

(Ah, the glistening wonder of ambiguity!)

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