Between The Brinks Poem by jim hogg

The old obsessions still persist
the rats are in the walls on stilts
our precious water's boiled away
behind the veils there's only veils
I'm whistling and I'm whistled on
the train I'm on's the train that's gone
I walk the dog, the dog walks me
but still I'm fading gradually

into some kind of calling from
the crumbling edges of a song
wild apples in old unwalked woods
the moment when I failed to choose
the wheel that used to mill the grain
the flooding tide in shapely bays
or something on the bridge that links
the many shifting things we missed

between the brinks and sheltered lanes
that bend through arteries and veins
the dream that slumbered in our hints
the unsaid word that's haunted since
the merest touch, a certain stance
a moment's thrill, some thirst unquenched
a vast expanding consciousness
of blazing eyes and flawless kiss

all hollowed, numbed, yet not quite gone
so long as memory still haunts
the winning hand we never played
the fevered thing I wouldn't save
but, now and then, the homely smell
of burning branches on the wind
that blows from careless yesterdays
can fill my head and ragged sails

and frame our broken history
I said I loved you fervently
in this bed here just hours ago
while you were in a longish coat
and we were in each others' arms
like some nostalgic work of art
in some strange clearing far from here
in woodland thick with yearning years

a weaving binding us at last
across so many with'ring pasts
and wanting spun from traces blown
through far too many summers flown
to burn or not to burn, I asked
and crave the ashes that we are
too much will never be enough
oh what a thing it is to love


26 07 2021

(Song - adapted from A Dream Reflects)