Richard Copeland
Nuzzling a leftover bin-bag chance,
his shadow-brushed track slips
through moonlight, drifts dusky streets
unnoticed through subways;
a planned, single minded foray.
Glanced in headlights,
he watches, knows
that time’s slippage places him in the centre
in a moment to be elsewhere,
bore-sighted in another field.
His spirit runs where only he knows;
a red coat challenge. Eyes watch,
ears cocked, senses tuned,
running slouched against rain
and the lantern’s beam.
Something vague pads
half seen, drifting to need.
A high voice shrieks,
shout-startling night’s stillness.
Fox paces his thoughts,
a stream of events
caught sharp in this moment. Gone,
scent lingering; a wisp torn
from the eye’s comet tail,
the smoke of his passing.
The turning of the year, another boundary.
A post in a borderless landscape fixed
to draw some datum point where there is none.
A line drawn in sand that sand will soon erase.
The razored concrete borders political
and divisive; the line of the gun’s barrel
where hostilities began, another point fixed
in that sweep we call history. A pin, a red line
drawn from a to b marks where it happened.
Compartments, pockets; capsules we may call
years run seamlessly away from here to there
beyond vision or horizon, merge
with a kind of infinity, the sort that mocks
attempts to quantify that which
may not be measured.
We place our space in time,
surround ourselves with wire.
Let no one in.
Let
the space
between us
narrow and close.
Together we shall explore something new.
You walk in light, and light your mirror shows
the other you
reborn from
shadow.
New.