Owls in the Gutters
for Micky Dayman
I.
this is only a beginner’s guide:
for the more advanced there is Bach
and that autumn leaf that tickled Bashō’s snoring nose.
item one:
do not roost in some dark corner
keeping guard over your cold body.
circumstances have rendered you lighter than air,
use this fact to your advantage, friend,
you are celestial now.
slowly, without your even noticing,
you will forget whose body that is
with the tag on its toe,
forget everything, even how to breath,
even forget that you are dead,
which is when you will start to loom large over your void.
death is best left to the living, friend.
you are the glint in the silt now
of the slow wend.
II.
sad is not an epiphany,
sad is not some underline in a diary:
sad is just sad.
sad growls what do you want?
me or ten years of lead-limbed mornings?
sad says a lot but slowly,
like the ground beneath us.
sad makes a point of fluffing the pillows
that your head can barely rise from.
sad says the tap drips
as a cold fact not a plaint,
pips along like a child
chasing gulls in some old Super-8.
sad nods her head in her sleep
as though confirming a whisper passed on.
III.
there will be
no more poems
friend
the words
once thought infinitesimal
have just about
run out
these
are the last
precious few
the void
has crept up
to the wire
we must
hold steady while
the darkness mills around
for
when you left us
you left us speechless
IV.
since the funeral
my shadow has become
a sort of pale echo, a limp tethered thing.
I noticed it first that morning
as Lindsay and I killed an hour
before the 11 a.m. service.
we were strolling down the rows of smudged headstones,
this limp form trailing reluctantly behind,
as though some dark ink had been spilled.
Lindsay’s beside it seemed so bold and so true,
like one of your stories,
while mine seemed to be saying dive into me, don’t worry.
so, the cemetery gulls duly obliged,
only to rise again sharply
with those dry crumbs that always catch in the throat,
water the eyes.
V.
I can no longer judge happiness,
other people’s or my own.
the nature of the fire on that distant ridge,
its scale and intent.
not that I don’t believe
that happiness exists.
I know it does
because it casts a shadow.
it’s just that happiness has always been
the simplest of constructs:
someone smiles they are happy,
someone laughs they catch the ear of the gods.
VI.
aged eight
I glimpsed my first widow’s smile,
a pale ember
in the cold ash of whispers and grimaces,
the laughing priest
never far from the banquet table,
all the pretty flowers
bursting with colour around the closed casket
where the dead always seemed to be telling some office joke.
I would run off with the other children
to play amongst the headstones, scratching my head,
listening to the breeze
sighing in the thistles as I hid:
the longer they took to find you
the happier it made you.
Justin Lowe lives in a house called “Doug” in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. His ninth collection is due out through Puncher & Wattman in October 2024, and he also has a novel doing the rounds of publishers Down Under.
Comments