Shrill

SOC Writing _ 20.10.21

Shrill

Ring out over wet and cold landscape - over port and hills, over sea and clouds, over dreams and waking - over everything decaying - and in my quest to follow life I end up here with gut sickened - mind adrift - if only for an hour. How do I enter the land of my living, how to do I let go the silver cord and remain breathing? There is not a way to enter this day - apart from being in it - sinking into Tyler’s world - chai at my desk, pen in hand, paint on the nose - and look at how life knows, how it grows like leaves on the silver birch - opening, unfurling to another ring added to its trunk, another spring, summer as yet there were none of them. In my nothing - the dogs barking - the children jostling - my fire wood spent - I’d give a lot for these old days - like she said - didn’t we do well - and we did and we didn’t - we rose and fell - like the bull waves a the local beach - painted our faces with smiles and cocao - made pacts to continue our love - then dismantle it - across the arch of time we stand - looking to make something more permanent - an edifice of choice dismembered by what we don’t choose - what is really chosen by life - we don’t have a choice in that which we become - like the feijoa tree - the best we can hope for is to one day produce feijoas.  So nourishment and finding light, sun, soil, water - safety, freedom, love - this is the ground we will return to - I hope you will return to with me - and yet there are many place we can grow - far and wide - put your hand here for a while and warm yourself - I am not going anywhere - you are not going anywhere - after the storm there is soft rain - we plant, tend and begin again - this love, life - knife fight - this beauty in our sight - this able bodied - full bodied fuck yes to you - to this one life given - reality cleaven to the parts of us that we are yet to understand.