You dream of Zanzibar, of coconuts heat-split, undulating blueness horizon-creased
hulls colonised by barnacles like cardinal points on a map shadows clownfish in
deep pink coral reefs, chair-o'planes sky flying and of hands softened by lanolin
as if something not previously imagined like Salt of Sargasso good for scurvy,
or explorers before Lewis 'n Clark, of Manor houses left after war for asylums
behind a plantation of Scots pine fenced off, before piers walked into oceans,
Defoe's Crusoe or Jacques Cousteau brings flying fish into living rooms, room
was made on your red settee for ocean-going steamers, palm houses and linden
blossom, beyond white poplars and willows billowing as if interrupting a yawn
after a fashion. Whatever happened to the umbrage you took, Lindbergh's baby,
to Houdini's last breath or Custer's Last, as you stand yourself a few swifts from
the Old Stand nightly, whilst watching pink noise snow blizzard television's screen
screening nothing but a plan of inaction, new starts and one for the road, roads
leading to Glenamaddy and such like, of God forbids and heavens above, below
a battery of searchlights signals an overture's arrival like Jesus on Palm Sunday,
where handed out green branches are tucked behind pictures, mirrors and holy
water fonts; pines wither, falls to ground till faith is reaffirmed with a new branch
o' the family playing happy families on feast and holy days of bloody obligation.
To clear the decks you'll have to bide your time, not make waves and keep hard
shoulders in sight, like stark rank and file solutions to free-flow imagined futures.
Secrets hide in the lining of your skin, geometry of a life you might have had.
Sky holds its bladder till thunder builds like a Bolshevik on the eve of revolution.
Copyright © Anne Fitzgerald 2012
