Ordinary Day Poem by jim hogg

I'd like to think there must be more;
the house we lived in long ago
amongst the sycamores and stars,
was stuffed with hints of futures past,
and teeming surge of what's to come,
beyond the tide that never turns.

And so I sprinted off towards
a headlong hurtling at the rocks;
the war that never seems to end,
and barely feel a sense of self
in this spent arc of what I am,
in plans that dwarfed the plans I had.


It's all for love; it's all for blood.
We all fall down; we all fall up;
from nets we're in, to nets we've thrown:
this tangled tapestry we've sown.
It's scramble down towards the beach,
or breathless climb up through the trees,

against the guns, across the bones
and choice of ice cream on the slopes.
Or myths that flood our lives like blood
with trigger words that summon up
these strangers baked inside us all,
who'll kill for gods or demagogue.


What kind of truth joins all the dots?
Hypocrisy, or ones and noughts,
a tender kiss, a falling leaf,
or rolling fields of blood and grief,
when every ordinary day
eight billion dreamers twitch away

their solitary silences,
within their deeps and distances?
And in those shadows, many worlds;
each moment ripe with stones to turn.
It's ring a ring o' roses round
the hanging tree, the lost and found.


(chorus)

Beginnings are such precious things
between the gun and crazy sprints.
although there's nothing new at all
beyond the words, beyond the walls.
It doesn't matter where I stand,
the ghosts of every season past
start dancing in the old town hall,
though I can't be what I once was
on restless waters, singing winds
in sweetest moments on the brink.

08 07 2020