Poem 428

All roads lead circuitously to Rome and a train of thought is no exception … this is a poem about digressions but it also digresses itself, wandering through various memories and scenarios before finally discovering what it’s about, what draws all the threads together, namely the virtues of going with the tides and currents of the flow rather than rigidly steering the course you’ve set, trusting in the force that shapes free association into narrative in both life and art …

( I like the blank blue machine of the sea and the palindromic rhyme of away by that matinee … )

Digressions

You pull curtains like great purple dresses
across the body of the world
                                                           pour your voice
into the room like splashes
from a green glass bottle

I can't help but wonder where you got
that tone did your father bring it back 
from one of his trips or your mother take it 
out of a shoe perhaps
on your thirteenth birthday?

once I went to sleep on the train
it was strange to wake so far out of my way
to find myself paddling in the sea
instead of reading the evening paper
you feel almost duty bound
to go on to stretch the dream out
until sunset snaps into night
or rain slaps the colours out of your head

            if I had been the prince of the title
in the first film I ever saw
The Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon
I'd have swum for it after my father the sun
slipping inside the sea like a coin into a blank
blue machine
                            but I'm only a few percent
of the boy blown away by that
                                                              matinee
mouth hanging open to taste the huge images
on his jaffa stained tongue
letting go suddenly and completely
of all his seven years
forgetting where he is
what he is
that he is

                   same mild epilepsy
as now vanishing deep beneath
your voice
                    letting it take me far
                    out of my way