SALISBURY PERSPECTIVES POEM 3

As the heat threatens to flatten us, I take advantage of the cool period of the day. The grass is burnt, but the trees continue in their green shady way.

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"True, by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery — a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness." Joseph Conrad

Do We Know?

We pace along the broken path,

Do we know where we head?

I trace my finger along the map,

The spaces tell a tale of dread.

Time too drives on a broken line,

Confusing in its tremulous tread,

As time passes so do we,

To dream and fragment in its stead.

A rose has petals from its stem,

A point to make a circle grow,

The petals droop and drop,

The essence remains while we do.

So here we stand on the broken path,

Idle and steady in our view,

Do we know what it is we do?

I turn and move along with a laugh.

"A tale is born from an image, and the image extends and creates a network of meanings that are always equivocal." Italo Calvino