Grown Old, I Walk
through Gathering Dusk
The gibbous moon hangs in this painted sky,
Ancient and wistful, a demented crone.
I scrawled her sad face on my nursery wall;
A wooden spoon chased me upstairs that day,
Early to bed, no cake or jam for tea.
The curtain elves, sorry to see my tears,
Sprang into life, trying hard to make me smile,
Setting tall ladders against woven boughs,
Plucking golden apples, crating them with care.
Their patient ponies pulled red, creaking carts
Through a child’s world, dappled in deathless green,
Whose trees bore bright fruit all the year long.
The summer sun shone on me, heartlessly,
As, sprawled upon my flowered eiderdown,
My fairy-tales consoling me with lies,
I felt the sea breeze cool on my flushed cheeks.
My little bichon does not like the dusk.
Close to my feet he trots, with wary gait,
Growling at shadows lurking in a bush,
Bobbing about, boat on a choppy sea.
His wool glows whitely in the thickening gloom,
Gathering the light against it, like a ghost.
Above the blue gums, cockatoos are wheeling,
Raucously scolding, thinking he’s a cat.
He stops and sniffs at the approaching night
Hanging in huge, swart clouds above the hills,
So menacing, we turn and head for home.
Last night I dreamt black, drizzling labyrinths,
Held shuffling crowds, all wandering vacantly,
Shade following shade, eyes fixed upon their feet;
In that grim throng, none spoke or noticed me,
Each trapped within the prison of itself.
There, making my slow way with faltering steps,
Answering a summons I could not ignore,
Visa expired, all baggage left behind,
I sought in vain for what I thought I’d lost,
Though what it was I sought I dared not ask,
And where I went I did not seek to go.
Then, just as I attained the River’s brim
And glimpsed the ferry by that silent wharf
Where the dull ooze flows chill and sluggishly,
A great wind took me, like an autumn leaf,
And bore me, lifeless, into that brown air.
Startled, I woke and stumbled from my bed,
Swathed in the dark folds of this smothering dream,
To watch the moon, earth’s cold, funereal bride,
Stare back at me with vacant, stony eyes,
A death’s head casting shadows on the rug
Where my scared pup lay whimpering in his sleep.
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