"This was a poem that came to me as if a movie scene, and it was so detailed it preempted me to write the story in prose. The prose is entitled 'Revenir' which is Fiction (?) - but the bird and the Grenadian beach is true life. Oh, and it was written a very long time ago." - Griffonner



The light falls.
A red ball into a blue sea.
It sizzles to the gravel beach,
and its breath rattles.

The water falls
on pink cheeks reddened in the eve.
Wetting dried-up lines: riverbeds
pain has carved through time.

Cane brandy flows
between trembling and aged lips,
waking shades of what once has been -
and will not return.

Bare feet slap
on sun bleached wooden planks of grey,
on his lone journey down the hall
silent of her voice.

The lamp swings
and casts eerie kitchen shadows,
flitting between memories
that fail to be real.

The door squeaks
and groans to be opened again.
Pots and pans, cups and saucers,

mate - lip to rigid lip.

Dust motes fly
as his wrinkly hand seeks it out.
But it hides in a corner, and
is safe, out of reach.

The chair scrapes drag marks

through the pale threadbare rug.
Breath catches and blood pumps it up
and he arises too.

He climbs it,
a tall step for his aged bones,
and then it is within his grasp
and he is connected.

No bird flies
that's made of woven palm leaf -
crafted on a Grenadian beach
when paradise was his...

She walks in
and his dreams are granted life...
but there is, as always, a price
to gain paradise:

Breath is stilled,
a body flies home to the earth
and finding it, does not feel pain...
it is in her arms.


© Griffonner 2024