A friend has sniffed romance in the air. I can’t talk about it. She’s afraid that I might curse it and undermine her whole future. But I wrote this for her this morning …. by way of wishing her luck.

Actually, it all springs from her use of the word ‘nascency’. I had to look that word up to find out what it meant. I have a very poor vocabulary.

***

I am walking in the park

There’s someone walking by

No one very special

Just an average kind of guy

I wonder if he’s talkative

I wonder if he’s shy

I wonder what he’d wonder

If I approached and just said hi

 

I wouldn’t call him short

But I wouldn’t call him tall

I wouldn’t call him anything

I don’t know him at all

I wonder if he’d stop and help

Were I to trip and fall

He might ask me for my number

Then I’d wonder if he’d call

 

There’s such a lot to wonder

I wonder if I’d dare

To pledge eternal love for him

And wonder if he’d care

My goodness! He just looked at me!

He saw me stop and stare

I think there’s something happening

There’s something in the air

 

The whole thing’s in its nascency

We haven’t spoken yet

I don’t know what might come of this

Or just how far we’ll get

It’s time to cast a spell on him

It’s time to cast my net

There can be no complacency 

There will be no regret.

***

I set about writing something optimistic tonight.

I don’t know how it morphed into being about the end of a relationship.

I’m not even sure if it is about that.

You decide.

Whatever. I think it’s still, sort of, optimistic.

***

Gee.

Did you see how good the sky looked today?

It found me alone but not lonely

Just nothing to say

It’s me

You saw me.

Ignored me

I didn’t get in your way

‘Cause we’re free

And when the sun

Hits ours eyes

We can suddenly see

And agree

About everything

And that everything is

What it’s meant to be

***

It is here in Australia, anyway.

My own father went missing a few years ago and is not responding to messages. I send them anyway – not because I expect him to hear them but because I take some comfort in the sound of my own voice saying them.

I miss him.

My suspicion is that he has found a really good fishing spot somewhere and needs to keep it a secret. He will tell me when the time is right. When my own time has come.

And I should really have spent more than five minutes working on a poem in his honour. But he would have understood that I didn’t. He would not have judged. He would have laughed.

That’s the kind of relationship that we had.

***

Hello.

It’s Father’s Day again

Don’t think

That I’ve forgotten when

You held me in your arms

So tight

And read me fairy tales

At night

Protected me

From what you knew

Gently told me

What to do

Slowly told me

What was true

So I might one day

Be like you

***

And here’s another one from the same author that I stumbled upon. I am thinking that in not giving it a title he is trying to somehow add a sense of mystery and, paradoxically, attain some sort of credibility.

I added the picture – hoping it to be suitable.

This one seems to make a bit more sense to me but still comes across as a tad pretentious.

And that’s what worries me about poetry sometimes. I struggle to seperate the truly meaningful from the utterly inane.

Anyway, this is what it is, I suppose.

***

The sun on distant hills

Shadows like a curtain

Falling upon the stage

Upon this turning page

The light descends

This chapter ends

In sorrow

Let me steal or borrow

Memories

To take into the night

To wearily take flight

And yet

Forget

This day

That I may

Dare to dream

Until tomorrow

***