Swan Princess Spring

A place where loose ends meet

here I stand in sound –

laughter  somewhere over there

females talking

the spring on my right

where I just filled two

five-litre bottles

a boy racing past

his scooter wheels drumming

across the boards

a tiny bug which crawled along

the rail

beneath my arm and somehow

then

found its way up onto my sky blue

backpack

a bee on those small pink flowers

a poet would certainly know their name

but alas I do not

two youths who now enter the fray

seated on the bench where the baby was ten minutes ago with mother and father

laughing fit to burst while ma and pa pull faces

these, on the other hand, lower

the tone

peering at their phones

talking excitedly about something utterly lost to the filter

of loose ends

patchwork talk

 

was that a rat that just scurried under the boards?

it caught my eye but vanishes

like the bug that was a microscopic dinosaur  if nothing else

lost to the sounds and stimuli all around

a distant motorbike’s angry fart

 for want of a kinder word

a bird or two faintly overhead

barely register among the many strands

further back

the dull persistent drone of cars

more than equalled by

the wee spring burbling

here at hand  unrelentingly

you don’t understand –

a man says  twice

animatedly

as two of ‘em

walk by

and now a tap tap of hard heels

on the boards

beating time

urgently

 

I failed to mention the air

its qualities of leaf and tree, of damp

and soil

the air’s a given

yet still part of the tapestry

and my body propped against

the wooden rail

as I type away

giving these sensory strands

my mind’s wandering

attention

till snap

I close the phone

and settle back into linear time

and

 

is that it?

 

is that all?

you're just going to leave it at that?

 

Why do you cry little child?

Off they go, the two

whose conversation

declared that life is base

and full of crap –

I purposely avoid the s word

It doesn’t amuse the duck

who mocks

my false delicacy

with a raucous HA HA!

 but what can be done?

the soul undeniably yearns

for soft gentility

yet finds itself hemmed in

by human muckery

the stuff of ugly words

 the fabric of phones n' cars

it howls for solace

until, that is, I step back

and allow

the senses space and

liberty to uninvent me

to smoothe away my troublesome fidgety mind

 liberty to experience the eternal

 the infinite

here

by a murmuring spring

in a noisy city’s

  woodland fairy

 sanctuary

and be   [undisclosed]

 

 

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