Wednesday 18th February
This came out of Catherine’s Story. I took a small portion and expanded it. I couldn’t help myself. As so often happens the thing wrote itself. And hey, surprise surprise – this one doesn’t rhyme. Actually I should try writing free verse more often, in many ways it works better. The thing is I so very rarely write any poetry; you need to be in exactly the right mood….
The Water Boatman
I always get this terrible urge to please people
By telling them exactly what they want to hear
It’s the pleasure
That gleam of excitement in their eyes
As they realize
They’ve won
That is so addictive for me.
But I really should have listened to her
I should have looked beyond the words she was saying
To discover what she meant
The trouble is
I hear the words they say
But never decant the true spirit
The clear essence
Out of the sediment of emotions
Murking my mind.
I am too interested in being the artist
The dilatory creator with his box of coloured oils
Mixing and daubing
Blending the tints
Melding them
Caressing the paint
Onto the canvas
Of our bodies
I was never really in the picture at all
I was outside the frame
Admiring my handiwork
And like all bad artists
Who never know when to stop
I kept on tinkering
Teasing out a crease of a line here
Darkening a hue there
Redefining the sadness in her eyes
Until all that sparkling glimmer was lost in a flood
A welter of tears
I had been a patient listener
When listening was part of the key
To turn
The tumblers of her heart
But I hadn’t heard what she was really trying to tell me at all
I had been too busy amassing
An array of clues
With which to reconstruct the image of her
Triggers to fire the moulded clay
Salt to crack the wounded glaze
When
Inevitably
She would be gone.
Those golden moments between orgasm and sleep
When the only thing you hear is the quick pound
Of hearts-a-flutter
And those waves of contentment come flooding in
Her flushed face
And hot hot breath on my breast
While my fingers stroke her damp sweaty hair
And the skin that was alabaster cool is now hot
Aroused and tender
So tender that the merest touch traces
A blotchy line of red
To these dilettante fingertips.
And then the morning
With her hot little body
Curled up against my back.
The dank taste of her slept-in body
The sharp and loamy smell of her
Crumbs of sleep still in her eyes
Un-brushed teeth
Un-guarded breath
The matted tendrils of hair
The rust of desire and the verdigris of hope.
And I never heard what she was trying to tell me
Only the words she used
I never took the time to discover the person swimming
Deep beneath the surface
I never discerned her frantic struggle
To escape the net
I had spread for her
Like a water boatman
Skimming the water for reactions
I was lurking
Waiting and listening
Recording the minute changes in surface tension
Unaware that she had swallowed too much water already
And was far beneath me now
As she was swept away
And out of my grasp forever