Later, she will call it ‘Black Wednesday’.
Six hundred laid off while all I see
is her on a swivel chair in an office –
hopeless – hoping to sell herself;
long distant frustrations like footsteps;
one follows another as sales pitches
and sorries lacquered with charm.
I, who held a tenuous link, now broken,
sit in February sun far away
on calcified rocks with the living
all around and over, that accepts
the turn of a day at its own speed.
Sea slaps, and a tea-coloured pool thrives.
It fills and overspills like all of us
and the cosmos.
A wood atop the highest cliff loses
in small slices of moment. Down it comes.
Rain leaves its seepage marks; bloody trails
that look as though life larger than life
had been lined up and shot.
I must be under the spell of spirits
that rest within faces scoured in sandstone
and pebbles - the sea, the artist.
In one weathered dome, striations
are paper layers, as tree rings; stone years
of small events. I will share but a beat.
We shared almost no time at all.
So I take home one pebble, cold,
and damp in my palm as a frozen heart
that thaws with an inch long scar.
