Not so ex

cross-legged on my cushions

cradling guitar as she strums

and sings songs she wrote

about the mountains of Time

when dreams and days

were still fey and Neptune ruled.

 

And now, with the  privilege of (relative) age

we can afford to indulge in Earl Grey tea

and reminisce on the days she skipped

in kaftan and headband

flowers painted on cheek, incense in her hair

bare-toed and open-hearted to the pipes of Pan

- Paradise regained.

 

and all those rosy-tinted spectacles fell flat said I.

With a Scorpio sun behind her Libra rising

- and mine, complementarily, the other way round -

I daresay we know all about that.

The worm in Eve’s apple.

The canker behind Venus’ sweet smiles and sentiments.

 

I was going to Tibet this summer she says

We took a picture of you

one of my close up specialities

not up my nose! you protest

 clutching my special rock,  knees sagging

a heavy baby this! you groan.

Click!

 

We can go to Lhasa, ride yaks

and stare at lilies another time.

There’s plenty of that stuff around

 long as we don’t loose it

- waste it - insult it - forget it -

by which time we are subsiding, belly-bulging

horizontal among the stones, tea mugs and shoes

 the flute, children, books

littered about all over the floor.

 

No, I think I prefer Nepal;

one can sit under a tea-bush and smoke juniper berries...

 

and then, out of the bushes

appears this abominable snowman toting a  Klashinoff…

 

while Mr Right, at the right moment

produces this emerald engagement ring, and…

 

drops  it in the mud

at which point, out of the bushes…

 

Mr Edvard, just back from the Boston coffee party

casts a smouldering glare at  Enid…

 

at which point, out of the rhododendron bushes

with an edifying crash…

 

You can’t have edifying crashes…

 

This one was. It edified everyone.

Even the extraterrestrial…

 

Which extraterrestrial?

 

Meanwhile, I am thinking of all the folk who are absent,  while we music/merry-make, and I wish, were not. Progressed into other dimensions, digressed into other latitudes or tenses - and yet, in some strange way, are not. Those whom I crave for, grieve and tremble over and treasure, marvel and rejoice in, in their magical and multifarious ways.

 

Feb 1989