Texture Shots:
A Quiet Exile
It stands, unmoving and silent. In a way that unnerves, not quite threatens. Once it was such that no one need look up. They existed safe in the assurance that it will watch their way, from day to day. And then, beyond me beyond you. The cold-comfort of the copper, locked in an eternal call and response. From my seat on the train the world seems to pivot around it, as though it has been twisted into an axis.
Taking each rung in stride.
A man pauses – crack-eyed – taking in a mobile panorama.
One for the folks back home.
(Seeming like miles) Below, a day fastens into motion. Some things are always unchanged.
Somethings will never wash away. And they stood around, agog mouths, switched out.
Meanwhile little pieces of paper, holding more than the weight of ink, sit in order behind layers of red brick and committee intention.
Slats of wood, soaked in tar and eucalyptus, slowly start to heal. The roots begin to flare, itchy-fingered, and take hold.
No damage that can’t be healed by a well-meaning, hand-waving initiative. Clean body, clean streets.
The sky didn't pause for any of it. Like it didn't care. But the hill, just over from where it rose, sat veiled now. Then breathe it in. And it soaks in. Carried like a yoke, between all. Where it tarries at the hem, insisting upon itself.
Stood out on the empty street, watching a sun blinded in vapour. Captured quietly on the sweeping hour.
If she calls out once more, you swear. As the light shifts, soaking in sullenly to the wall. Where Paolo poses at Francis in the obligatory way. Caught Looking, disdain-drenched and tired. Over the hill.
Occasionally it fed back, oh it was hot, the sticky tarmac - like '95 or 6. A thin desire to sleep, thinner still to run down the clock. Always waiting for a lesson, but who cares what the future brings. Same as the haze that returns. Pushing past St. Stephen and the lion.
Suspended out, between the two columns,
Just as quietly in surveillance,
Soaking in there by the Sycamore
The cascading sensation of time,
At once rushing and dragging,
Kept along with the sense of filling
Set in place, for the most part ignorable,
Then it punctures, when you weren't looking,
Hitting with the flow of the cars,
The throbbing sense of boots on the ground,
Otherwise unsure, minus/minus resistance,
Creeping upwards to mount pressure, a broken jaw
Scattered amongst this setting they come, prick-point colour, yellow, pink, purple. Basking in the light, saturated. As though to be almost perverse. Just pictured it soft-focus, slow off-beat voice over, not a gravel garden
