It's Called Love.

You looked at me and in me
and I knew it was love.
Lightning strike love
That changed everything.


Made me seventeen again.
Nervously grinning.
Laughing at nothing, and everything.
While my past was king-hit to the floor


Later, the first searing kiss
burned off my shell.
I laughed and cried and
Loved you.

As you loved me.
The waves blending back
into each other,
strengthening and supporting.

 
So that now.
We are two lives,
with one dream
and a home in the world.

 This is based on a story someone told me about someone else

Light and Memory

Light bounces down the years,
with all angles equal.
Memories are made where it hits,
by light on a film in a camera.
Except that we are the camera box
and our brain is the film.

The angles are equal
So the strikes are evenly spaced.
And from parent to child
memories can pass.
With some overlapping.

But it is information that passes
which we colour ourselves.
With lives and experience,
context and meaning.
Projecting a life.

Does the film stick in the gate sometimes
get too much light and heat?
Blister and bubble inside
while on the screen of our life
the sudden change
jolts the watchers.

Or does the light when it hits
carry some memory away
on the reflective bounce.
Taking a bit more each time
until too much is missing.
Not being replaced by incoming light.

Or the film just wears out.
Meat and bone in the end.
Not made for infinitely
bouncing down the years.
Like light, spreading memories.

Robert Johnson and Me

Robert Johnson is not happy.
You just phoned it in he says
Meeting your deadline, he says
a word he does not like.

Look, I say, it was tough,
My wife was sick, I was the one,
people depended on me
to get things done.

Robert Johnson snorts,
Yeah, Sure was tough
You got hanged, you got beat?
people spat at you in the street?

For me, he says, it was rough,
You don't know you're alive, and here I am dead.
Dont give me that
"it was tough" line.

Robert, I say, I know it was hard,
and how bad it was.
But for me in this time
I had to prioritize

He isn't listening, he says
If I had given in, if I had been a quitter
I'd have been killed quicker
It was in me and I had to let it out.

I say, I did what I had to, to get by
I could not allow me to fail.
But Robert Johnson accepts no soothing,
he is on my trail

Wing Road

Wing Road is a knifecut in the earth,
slicing from coast to mountains.
A line to be crossed with,
No guidance given.
As to benefit or cost.

So I’m standing here with thoughts ablaze,
knowing that I have to do something.
While the pull from each end of Wing road,
pins me here, like a beetle.

There are crossroads on Wing road,
and I really should have turned off.
But where the Hell am I going?
No money, no love, only time.

Glowering clouds hide the mountains,
out at sea a force four storm.
Wing road says clearly to me,
“This is it, you are here”.

1912 Ragtime Orchestra.

This was played at the restaurant
where we had our anniversary meal.
We talked back through the years
people, places,events -memories.

You could make a list of it.
This one was kind, this one not,
this place was cold, that one hot.
That cat was strange, this one is worse.

Memories, though are not just a list,
they have sounds, smells, odd details
and feelings, attached.
Like the recording was not just some songs.

You could feel it in the music.
Where sometimes they berated the Devil,
Sometimes loved with all their heart.
Swaggered, when they might have been cowed.

The needle recorded emotions behind words,
Life is not just a recipe, 2 cups this and 1 pinch that.
You can feel the feelings
And accept some comfort.

Auckland Domain

The great man picked up his ice axe and left the hut
So we stood in the rain to watch him go.
Then later a vagrant guy took my hand
Said "Kia ora, bro"
and sniffed my knuckles.
Wouldn't stay to talk though I wanted him to
and the pang of his leaving was sharp.
Why was that?
I thought about my Dad
who fits somewhere between but shares traits with both.
How sharp will that leaving be?
And me, the watcher, the note writer, looking for reasons
fitting the pieces but not seeing the puzzle.
Trying to make something from nothing
with the wrong tools.
But I got a glimpse of an old photo.
A boy and a tram going by.
He's watching, noting remembering
Is that me or my Dad or my son?
We are all stops on the same line.
So we waited for the bus
life flowing past.
While my son slept on my lap.