Saturday, February 4, 2012


“In Our Adventuresome Days” © Mike Absalom
11th January 2012

In our adventuresome days
this was a place we both knew
well,
a small tumbled garden,
choked by the forestry
flattened beneath the heavy
tramp of implanted trees.
There was a brooding energy here,
almost vindictive in its
insistence
not to be crushed.

The first time we undressed
a wild briar caught my sock
and scratched me like an
angry cat.
I bled red for a long time
beneath the apricot larches,
my fingers sticky as
fiddler’s rosin,
and in the fallen stones I
could hear
the echo of a silent
instrument.
Was that the voice of old
memories
soaked into the walls,
tuned up and biding their
time?

This garden was as silent as
our secret.
The forest had the fragrance
of an abandoned church
and yet, heavy with incense
and devotion,
it was still the perfect site
for a sacrament,
although for us, of a
different persuasion.
In our adventuresome days
this was the place and we
both knew it well.

When we left, smelling of
civet and musk,
we walked our separate ways
to other places.
In our adventuresome days
this was the path and we both
knew it well.

Pine though, and larch
needles accompanied us always then,
muttering inside our
underwear and promising to introduce
others
to the smell of Devil’s Turpentine
as evidence of certain damnation.
In our adventuresome days
certain damnation was a place
we already knew well.

But at least we had the
garden then.

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