Friday 25 May 2012

Bus notes 4

We were moving slowly up Cape Hill.                     
              A double jointed girl
              bent her fingers back
for her baby brother
who looked hard with wide eyes.
               When she had stopped,
he turned to look at me.
               I smiled without feeling anything

but a quiet desire to hold the gaze.
He turned away
and grabbed his mother’s thumb.
               I felt the muscles in my face and made them
               do the movements one more time.
Is this a way of making something really said?
               The double jointed girl was watching me.
I looked up front and felt the engine heat.

4 comments:

  1. My dear Wooden Boy,

    I hope you will not find it overly bold of me to have paid homage to your mechanically heated genius by reposting this poem, in another way, in another space, in another time, with all the proper link paraphernalia done up as though I actually had your permission. If you dislike the homage, let me know sharpish and it will disappear for good and all with virtually no one ever having noticed, as is right and proper. Of course.

    Wooden Boy: Bus notes 4

    (It is lovely that no one has looked or is looking into this comment box, privacy is a delicate yet essential feature of whatever interesting may be left to us.)

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  2. I'm more than happy, Tom. It's an honour.

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  3. Thank you very much, WB. As you will see when you get time to take a peek, people from "all walks of life" (as it were) have now joined me in enjoying your poem. So, a pleasure for everyone, then.

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  4. Thanks for sharing the work, TC. It's great to have more people reading the work (a bit scary too).

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