Interpretation
And they cannot be recaptured except
in this mind, in all of the universe.
It’s what old men do while they still can,
A substitute for all that they can’t:
repeated flights to unseen glories
they once passed through too hurriedly.
Each has his own specific details,
of commonly haunted ecstacies
we like to believe are beyond compare,
and too much with us to ever release.
Mine were simple things:
the creaking of a certain window frame -
no, there was more than that.
The bedroom light was the first sign.
It flicked on and a sudden surge
of wattage shot through me.
Seconds later, darkness
and I’d have to wait
‘til the window creaked
and her face took shape
through the open frame.
She always smiled.
And for sixty minutes
the net of the heavens
swept down and lifted me.
Or, at 8 on winter nights
-after I’d whistled the sign –
(and Andy Williams was finished)
the hall lamp was lit,
the front door opened
and she’d step out,
in anorak with scarf,
tight trousers and
a couple of inches of heel.
She was only five feet three.
The first few seconds were killing
in their thrill.
Or under the light
at old maggie’s gate:
coming out from her visit,
backlit, chatting to Maggie
the blue flames of her eyes on mine
striking me light as air,
excited as any charged particle.
But age and time
keep grinding away.
The art of nature
so finely woven,
so perfectly pitched,
self renews through us
adapts itself beyond us;
a smouldering blaze
that endlessly burns
mortality for fuel.
Last night I dreamt for the first time,
of her and I in black and white,
faded images of the two of us;
riven with ambiguity
and just as intense as ever.
Walking together,
out of the scene of the dream,
she pointed out a plum tree;
and when I looked I could see
only a lime, in shades of green,
hanging with unripened fruit.
poem by Jim Hogg
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