Half-Life
Postcript to Spinifex
Some experiences are too intense to look at, too painful or too ecstatically joyful or - as in this case - a wild, mad amalgam of both.
So we store them away until the memory eases of itself, slowly giving up - over days and months and years - some of the fierce intensity which at first burns at the very thought but which eventually calms, revealing new colours, new patterns and new imprints, even as the ache itself dissipates.
What is the half-life of love? When is it safe to handle again?
If you have read “Two Readings” then you may remember me saying “Never fall in love with another Poet.” But I did just that, out in the desert, and I can’t regret it because it is part of who I am now, though for a very long while it was too hard to contemplate. Then one day, reading poetry online, I found a video of her, reading her latest work….
So this is my post script to Spinifex. (If you haven’t read Spinifex yet, I suggest you read it first).
Half-Life
This was the voice
speaking out of a long silence -
poetry making itself heard -
coming from the places
empty of me but
full of so much else.
Coming from inside of myself -
my head like a Tardis holding
a whole landscape, a life, a brief
history of a brief love which
briefly bloomed like those
purple desert flowers after rain.
The red dust on your skin;
the splash of water at Glen Helen
as it swallowed your nakedness
half as fast, and half as deep
as my eyes, as my heart, as
my dry desert soul, drinking.
Taking, handling, processing and
rendering - storing you away until
you were safe again.
Something to be taken out,
turned over, touched -
Loving. Holding. Remembering.
One of the last things my friend said to me was - “You won’t end up lonely, you know.”
And of course she was right. For 25 years now living has been a delight - through all the griefs, disasters and struggles life entails. Meg, my wonderful partner in life, loved this poem when I wrote it. She printed it out and stuck it on the fridge - where it sat for a year - and she said “Work less. Write more.”
As always, her advice was good.
I’m taking it.
(PS I realise some people don’t know what a Tardis is. Of course! The Tardis is a fictional Time Machine (from the BBC TV series “Dr Who”), the inside of which is many times - perhaps infinitely - larger than the outside dimensions would indicate as being possible).
'storing you away until
you were safe again.'
Sitting here in the front room of a cold English, grey morning, I am imagining this poem 's words living and breathing in other lives. Thank you for sharing, Dave.
Now that's what I'd call a real poem! If I had written that I'd take it out and put it up on the fridge and leave it there until I had to get a new one. Another fine poem, Dave.