irene
clothier nee young {)|(digital print poem text)|(} the
past hovers
a shroud
i see
over your presence
the
present itself
at
best hopeful fog
as
if wishing alone
could
float you a future
you
drift, as we all do
on
waves to our childhood
stopping
at islands in the memory
otherwise
lost deep
in the
inland seas
which
constitute our experience
moments
when you bled
others
to your mother saying goodbye
candied
days on tropical beaches
innocent
and idyllic underclothing
naked
of technology
a south
pacific culture riddled with sunshine
in
a space where the sun and moon
still
turned the human tide i
wonder whether you are
dragged over adolescence's craggy rocks
where
the heart is painfully crossed
by
love's hot coals
do
you toil with the embers of passion's first embrace
are
the ashes layered somewhere
on
the sandy bay of your teens?
meanwhile
overcoated in blips and peeps
time
careers a steeping stone path
in
and out of the living and half alive
dissecting
a cadaverous present
the
future is doled out
at
pointless moments
with
inelegant swathes nonetheless decisive
a
moment is destined to last not a moment longer
in
this quicksand of fate suddenly
it is late
everybody
is late
too late
for you now
your
body is lost and
your
heart has been stolen
a
theft for which there shall be no trial
but
a crime reported in births, deaths and marriages
all
that remains today
is the static of your former existence
and
the branch within that is you and me
and
we shall not be dead
until
i too am called by the crow | 
