I can save it

At suppertime on New Year’s Eve

over clams and mussels and sheep’s jowls

a friend of a friend remarked with a wry smile

how he and our like had spent our entire lives

convinced that we were extra special

and how now all we really wanted was to think

and dwell in ordinary terms.

Clinking glasses to our impertinence

laughter imported a new chip to my conscience

and when it was time to go to the party

I felt not shame but relief that I would stay in

to see in the new year with Travis the Jack Russell,

a small glass of leftover red and a quintet of Black Mirrors.

 

A few days and a dozen Black Mirrors later

I caught an early morning flight

and was surprised to feel glad to be home

a place always avoided for fanciful wandering.

Looking around from the hallway  

I noticed how the sun filled the place at midday

and knew then that my evenings could be spent

without feeling I was missing out on something

that waking here need never again be filled with terror.

A welcome but giddy sense of gratitude arrived

and it was odd to imagine

that I may actually be able to embrace it.

 

New feelings are playful but enigmatic

prone to hopeless demotion

and walking into the kitchen I saw

that life would remain as fragile as ever.

Up on the tiles over and away from the sink

one of my two plants looked past retrieval

limp and still, surely dead,

its silky green leaves turned to flimsy flesh.

But the new feeling persisted

- I can save it -

and with an eggcup of water carefully given

I displaced old fears and hoped.

As the little it took tumbled through the empty soil

and appeared like an elephant’s tear at its saucer

I was filled with the shame of an unworthy father

incapable of protecting even the most undemanding

of living things.

I thought of my daughters far away

and wondered again if they still thought of me

or whether they saw me only in dreams

a wretched ghostly monster

sluicing and smoking in a dank cave

talking and laughing into a mottled mirror.

 

The next day after a nightmare I saw a revival

vague puffiness and a lifting of arms,

some impossible spirit had distilled my sadness,

and when I poured two eggcups of water to it

only a human tear found its way through to the saucer.

Perched to the side its more robust sibling

of waxy purples, greens and reds,

had thrived in my absence

for when I looked closer on tiptoes

I saw at its uppermost point

a new sprout of vibrant green had grown overnight.