Darwin, almost Midnight
Locked into a transit room, a bare utilitarian space,
the word love floats as I stare at shades of red.
One absorbs the hue of my childhood pedal-car.
A:B (E) Powder: To be used for paper . . .
Useful equipment to beat back the flames stoked
by Constantine, Diego de Landa, Savonarola and all
those who demanded the right of might, the right
of certainty, a denial of voices of diversity.
A man in an orange tee emerges from the Prayer Room.
I like the colour, always have. He looks Indonesian.
Time frays. I left you fourteen hours ago, and now you
will be sunk in sleep, scratching REM, possibly searching
the crowds, both lost in a city swarming with strangers.
I am flying at autumnal England to care for my mother.
How much care/love has filled these two red canisters
from alchemists, chemists, designers, manufacturers?
How many experiments, accidents, burns and blisters?
What is the nature of the chemistry of love? Our love began
experimentally, circling the globe, two weeks short of a year:
canoeing the Zambezi, cracking Eastern Europe’s spring
communism evaporating, camping on the Grand Canyon’s
northern rim, hiking British Columbia, snorkeling the Yucatan.
We beached in a village by a forest by the sea enjoying a daily
dance spinning easily from house to garden to the estuary.
The prayer room is deserted. Where are all our prayers?
As a child with original sin I still thought he reciprocated love.
I was sitting on a sunny window seat with Richard Roman
learning the catechism before a test, and possible beating.
Who made you? God made me. Why did God make you?
God made me to know him, love him and serve him.
in this world, and to be happy with him forever in the next.
Where is God? God is everywhere.
I love nature, wounded everywhere on Earth, and you.
An image – standing for goodbye at the airport – snares
the lucidity of tears, a moment when you were the most beautiful
apparition / performance / memory / work of art I’ve ever seen.
