Old Chair, Cold Window

This blog kicks off with my favourite poem. I must have written it 16 years ago, and I still get emotional when I read it. This theme of mourning the loss of childhood innocence shows up in a good deal of my poems and prose. When I think back 16 years and reflect on the state of my life at the time, it is safe to say this one goes a little beyond mourning. I was devastated, languishing my trauma, overwhelmed with damage. Now, in my late thirties, I still hold space for mourning, but I lean into gratitude. I am so thankful for the lessons I have learned and the strength I have earned. More on that later.

It is raining now on a mountain one 

Thousand metres above the treeline 

In a country 

In the south 

A polar opposite season.

A creak as my weight shifts in this old wooden chair and I

Look to my window at the slow gilding of cold rain 

The sleet that sticks to the glass like a memory or a plan. Like a dream.

There once was resistance and prorated flow over the mountain

Where waters now roll down gouged lines 

To the green life below, 

And the water sprinkled on the life and all the trees grew old. 

My old chair creaks again as I rise to refill my kettle. 

When I lift the tap, I look away for some strange sadness, again

To the window go my eyes 

To the dream. 

The rain in the lines form creeks and then rivers and I 

Am drawn to the potency of those rivers 

To cast for their foreign fish. 

On banks I will stand in their reeds. 

I see once I have turned on the burner 

A boy cloaked incomplete in those reeds 

And his line cast serpentine and untrue

To the waters from the mountain from the rain of thunderous clouds

And I know somehow 

With vicious lucidity 

Of an imminent deplorable crime 

And the boy’s body 

Will go to the waters 

And the foreign fish will feed 

On him that his body 

Will never be found. 

My old chair creaks as I sit 

Down and wait 

For my water to boil 

And the sleet collects and 

Blots out my backyard, 

And the boy in the reeds is an ocean of prompts away. 

I close my eyes 

And I wish 

To see the top of the mountain only 

The top of the mountain one 

Thousand metres above the tree line 

To see it before the 

Life before 

The gouges and just 

Wait for my kettle to scream.