FRIENDS
You see them quite often,
the old friends;
like old books, they
sit on the shelf of
past life yellowing,
acidly, unread;
like the one I saw
the other day in the
bookshop; we glanced,
but choose not to
open each other.
AN UNKNOWN NUMBER
When I came out and sat
with them for tea
they asked what was the occasion.
I said, it was my birthday tomorrow,
Saturday.
No one asked my age
as if it was a secret; they
having shameless birth dates.
So we talked around the
unknown number, an intangible
presence.
Not that it would have mattered.
There is nothing to be ashamed
in being 43.
Any more than the dog
barking, or a kid howling.
MICHAEL AND THE GITA
Michael, my little Chinese friend
tugs my sleeve in the news agency;
he holds up a new copy of the
Bhagavad Gita; ‘I am still
searching,’ he says.
His brown eyes are wide behind
the almond shapes. He has watched
the Mahabharata twice on
television - this ten hours
watching; we swap how fantastic
it was, meaning beyond the mere
surface of the words.
Michael and I have an affinity;
we both are seekers, interested
in Eastern Thought, sceptic's. But
we always approach it in a light-
hearted way, never intruding upon
the seat of the vocation. We talk
small the profound, in snatch
encounters.
For we only know one another as
fellow workers, and I am a
few grades higher than he is, so
there is a distance and constraint
in our encounters, a kind of
semaphore of the sublime over the
racket of busy work.
We hurry for the bus, joking, I
will test him on the Gita when
he is finished - to see how he
has progressed to enlightenment.
In his enigmatic Chinese smile
I wonder if he half-suspects
I am serious.
RETURNED HOME
So he has come back from overseas
as one sees so many,
a shadow of terror in their eyes
of too much movement and
change, things looked at
perfunctorily, of worry
day after day for food
shelter, money,
of being understood
of not being cheated: but
then that light; now he’s home!
RETREATS
He wondered why
he had known of these
things for so long,
and done nothing;
the retreats, the profession
of faith, the active participation
in the religions.
Wasn't it what he was?
Perhaps
But then there was the
spirit of the small
which sounded the clearest note.
A morning cup of tea,
the cat’s feeding,
the short trip in the garden
to fetch the paper.
In these things the air
did not stir, nor the grass disturb,
nor did heaven leach and
leave a stain.
RAMBLING MAN
There is only existence,
Glebe Park,
the blazing green of
the new summer elms,
the toasted air,
the contests between
the boys, running
with handicap;
the four deep circle
around the performer,
singing Ramblin Man;
he spinning, a vortex of
simple love in which
he transcends us
and we him.
MAGNET MART
Seated in the plumbing
demonstration I am surrounded
by silent unconnected men,
domestic janitors with
tatty hair and grizzled beards,
crumpled by life like
old cistern valves near
their use by date.
MEETING RELATIONS
The cousin was nice,
but her high-powered
barrister husband showed
all the signs that at
some stage he had
lost himself.
There was the guarded
politeness, the detached
glance, the clipped impersonal
speech, the disengagement from
and neutrality of subject,
the mien of tolerance
and repressed impatience and
lastly, that furtive glance
at the watch.
It was time to go —
to leave the million dollar
harbour-side mansion,
cousin wife and a man
we came to see
but missed.
NO LEDGER
This Persimmon tree
is no ledger.
Yet it feeds these
hungry birds in gratitude,
their work upon
its ruddy fruit
a kindness to another
time, another tree.
