Red

Hi BR. 

Your poem is so delightfully surreal that it shouldn't make sense, but worryingly, it does to me. I love the opening stanza - starting out with childlike simplicity 'I closed my eyes on the sunshine at a chair', and apparently finishing this statement with the blunt - 'in the garden of a house made of slats'. 

But then it goes on in the same surreal childlike fashion to tell the story of what was there behind closed eyes, 'a dirty great big red', (blood?) strangely a colour the narrator had never seen before, it being all at once, beautiful, dead and alive, and so different that when he opened his eyes, he knew something, which immediately roused my curiosity - what?

Even though it was so different, we realise in the next stanza that it wasn't totally unfamiliar because he'd worried and wondered how to stop them all his life. (This made me wonder how old he is - where?). Only after this recent epiphany, he saw the solution to this ongoing problem, which must have been a surprise, because it made him laugh - and I found this the most original and wonderful description - 'like cattle.' Why cattle? 

The introduction of the ant was equally delightful, it's purpose in being there becoming clear in a visual interaction, so well portrayed in the - 'it, I, it, I - with appropriate spacing to give the reader an idea of the actual time factor involved.

I could easily imagine the narrator offering the creature a way out and felt his puzzlement, and possible frustration when his offer was turned down. But then it seems that he was fascinated, sensing that the 'ant' was on a mission - it had something to say- which it did in completing its journey. I cringed when my mind heard that 'little popping and crunching sound.' 

And now, having read all this, I am as wise as the narrator knowing that in the end it's  -

'not the boom of earthquake

or chemical contagion

some nasty bunch of bastards

concocting sick schemes

under a metal hood.' that will do for us, it's still after all, in the hands of God. 

I absolutely adored this poem!
 

This felt really immediate - those moments when nature is telling us something: real/surreal, and so normal you could blink and miss it....but you didn't miss it and that makes great poetry. What else is it for?

Just another big, big thank you for being there for me from the very start. You are going to get a huge hug when I see you I am afraid.  L x

The inevitability of the ant's frying conveys a stark social message, a religious one, too for some. Your house slats reminded me of bunkers. All that red when you close your eyes on the sun is all too familiar.