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‘Like A Room With The Ceiling Taken Off’
Walk 33, Mortimer to Aldermaston- Aug 3 2002 2pm-
Aldermaston Soke Woods
Mike and I have agreed, it’s not perfect
but these woods may be
Our last and best chance for the creative half-hour.
Today, beneath hovering, pressing grey clouds
Rain seems imminent.
The unpredictable, gathering mass without
could burst at any moment
-so similarly within
So keep asking ‘who am I?’
As the batteries run low
Are we everywhere, are we nowhere
Eternity has boundless compassion
Yet Time has none, it sometimes seems
Soon will transpire the phenomenon of my 50th birthday
Yet the inescapable impression is that
I wasn’t fully born yet.
A sign says ‘DO NOT WAIT
FOR UNCONDITIONAL ACCEPTANCE TO COME TO YOU
It’s up to you- to reach out and unconditionally accept this moment.’
Can this be possible?
The sounds of birds in conversation;
Or the cars exhaling past on the nearby road;
The woodpecker which Mike just saw,
running up a petrified tree;
a rustling of the polythene map-holder on which my notebook rests as I write;
little red ants jumping on and off freckled forearms;
a sudden droning of an airplane
All this sense-input is acceptable, even welcome
But.
Can one unconditionally accept one’s memory?
Mine is like a warehouse of weapons into which
Guerillas of various factions have been let loose.
Or-( it would be more honest to say) there are only two factions in there-
My ego and all the ‘difficult women’ of my life-
Playing out a running battle.
Yet now- in a wave that supersedes these images-
It seems the unconditional love is coming back
Now I am envisaging Josefine in that garden
As night drew down last Sunday
(28th July- Nicholas’s 2nd posthumous birthday)
When to distract myself from the circular conversation
I looked up at the stars
And she said ‘it’s like being in a room
with the ceiling and roof taken off.’
I could no longer see her face-
nor that of Joebear, the other remaining party-guest-
Just a trace of moonlit profile.
But sensed an invisible bond, made solid by the darkness.
That falling away of light was
the falling away of everything Time-bound
leaving only
the Timeless bond of love.
(to be continued)