No man steps into the same river twice – Heraclitus of Ephesus
Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend, and inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read anyway – Groucho Marx
Dog Days: I
Going back, to places we were happy, once
The fields, bare, along the roadside, en route
All flat, mown, sere, this late in harvest,
As summer piles a year’s confected clouds
On top of distant hills, improbable
Sky-meringues, floating islands of sunset fantasies
Fifteen months since we came here, and yet
Still the potholes, in the rutted roads
Down byways here, where few, if any, come
Are bad as ever, moonscape lakes
To break and crack unwary axles
But, finally, we’re here, and I quarter off
By eye, the lumpy Mull of Kintyre
Across the horizon; the red can buoy
At Carradale, the lighthouse, Island Davaar
Wind-waves twinkle out in the Sound, flash points of light
Jewels, tempting as ever; she says she’ll walk
Along the beach for driftwood, for a fire,
But on her own: we both acknowledge
But do not say, that there should be a dog
Yes there should be a dog
How can we carry on, curating our life’s museum,
Her erstwhile stewards, and her being out of sight
Yet always somewhere just round every corner?
Are we doing it to prove that she’s still here, somehow?
Or we can do it anyway? Or both?
Going back to places where happiness, that
Fleeting concatenation of atoms
Welcomed us and opened our hearts to gladness
Such as it was?
What will it take? I’m scared to think,
To admit without the final missing pieces
Lost when Heraclitus upset the puzzle
The jigsaw stays forever unresolved.
Dog Days: II
Like Bede’s sparrow, time’s arrow,
We fly from dark to dark.
Dark to light, warmth – gone to dark
A fleeting spark
Dark for us, was winter littered with bricks and broken glass
And work, of course, treadmills of arguments, and pissing rain
Ice-cold; the never-ending fights
Endless, pointless, as the monochrome street-lights
And waking to the sound of car-alarms
All that’s behind us now, here, on Kilbrannan’s shore;
It all awaits us, still, again how soon, when we get home
How soon shall autumn over-reach itself and tumble
Decay to darkness as before, leaves despairing clutching hands
Struck down by rain?
But now, on this far-distant North-West shore
The sun beats on my page
Fusing ink to paper in one word:
Heat
- Already dry, almost as soon as written
The sound of the waves; the lap and swish and soothe of the waves
And the shush of the waves, the sun on the waves, the smell
Of ropes and tar, ozone and seaweed, of the waves
The waves to carry her back from Carradale
To Dougarie, to me, sadly alone and waiting,
The bees busy on the wind-nodding cowslips
But no dog asleep in the long, soft, aromatic grass;
Instead, the heat’s translated her to ashes
Atoms of ashes, and the seagulls wheeling above
Cry “weep, weep”.
Dog Days: III
These waves are not the same waves
That lulled and lapped us last time
When she was still with us; those waves now break
Long gone from here, on Bermuda’s shore
Or crash rocks on Tierra Del Fuego, those waves
Are gone, long gone, says Heraclitus
Those atoms have moved on, we cannot see
them now; her atoms also
Could be all around us, never-known
All we can do is hope her quickness
Is the lapping of these waters, the
Start of the birds; her dignity the grace of clouds
Her anima the gulls along the shoreline
Keening our grief still; where two herons stand, disputing
Like Pythagoras and Heraclitus, each contending about souls
And where each other’s atoms are, right now.
Meanwhile, in heat, some other atoms have become massed
To cowslips and marram grass
Burnet, sorrel, milfoil ragwort, whin,
But these are today’s plants, not yesterday’s
And even the Mull of Kintyre is vanished by the clouds
And reappears, with Ireland smudged behind it, but
These days are not those days, insists Heraclitus
Grave as ever, even though they look the same
Sound the same, and feel the same – no dog.
I am getting pissed off with Heraclitus, to be honest;
Nobody likes being told uncomfortable truths
No doubt he’s right, but God, the man’s a pain!
Reminding me, as if I didn’t know
I’m not that person now
Nor will I be again.
