Cold breath faded
In the carpet shadows
Night wanders hollow
Smooth as a stone
Unanswered silence
Resting soft
In summer’s warmth
Flesh bellied
Time waiting time
With growing fingers
Poems for my Grandfather by PelicanDeath, literature
Literature
Poems for my Grandfather
1.
Sunlight touches
Palm weight through heavy
Curtain shadow
I gather
Sitting council
Newspaper resting
Against the corner
Of his knee
He tells me
About passing time
Hold on to everyday
He says
Full Heart
beating soft
Clinging like dust
In the corners
2.
Hold in
A Waiting autumn
I turn
Placing a photograph
On the kitchen table
He has
His arm around her
Sun promise laughing
Warm light against
an open face
Cold body
Drifting hollow in the open tide
3.
New morning shapes
In the small hours
Breathing solid
A waning light
What do I say to him now
About the time that’s passing
The grass bends soft with
Moving shadows
Ne
Sunlight faded
In an afternoon
We reach with
Tender hands
Life is wanted
Soft-skinned
Folded dark in
Shadowed leaves
Full Summer’s promise
Two hearts bleeding time
Pulse heavy
We take each bite
With our fingers stained
Now We Know we thought we’d wash up welcomed, like flotsam lost along a well-worn section of beach; but the whole past summer (and spring before it) had been heaped from equal measures of dirty needles, to sand, to feet- and nobody was there to take us home we didn’t expect autumn to fall any softer and it didn’t; its air teemed thick with ghosts of drawn and quartered hope so we fished in its fog in raincoats and respirators for our sanity; fished from piers that disappeared daily as the tide rolled in we’d tread rising waters while every building on the horizon ached into memory, let to sink, like a derelict wreck but, we wanted to be found; needed this, a million times more than we’d ever wanted to find anything, ourselves now we know we were never meant to settle here, but were just unsettling enough to claim here momentarily, and now winter barely even needs to whisper its weapons against us it murmurs that love doesn’t live here and spring doesn’t either, that only the
Drop, drip, onto the floor: this is the blood flowing out of me. This is the birth of another loner, another Pentecostal to add to the sum- total of the sun. I am searching, seeking, stretch- ing fingers to the words, and him, as well. I have no grand idea this tired night; my eye bats, my skin sighs. This has gone on quite a long time. This has drooled on like an old hound. I wish it wasn’t still around. I’m still stretching- still bleeding- still trying to scry the answer in the afterbirth on the floor, the ruby-red tea-leaf reading and the pastel, patchy mosaic left after we mop up. This is the time. This is the sign I am always going to be alone. This is the shaking head, the scream, in response to a prayer from my mother, from my grandma, from God himself; we all hoped, and fanned palm branches, and laid down fine garments for his feet when he came; but he never came. The door was left ajar; the candles flickered on; the dinner went cold; and the doormat still sits