Bits And Clips Ii Poem by jim hogg

Bits and Clips II

A single gannet circling high;
a red and yellow patterned sky,
and full of wonder underneath,
two brothers working at their creels.
The moments pass, the pattern breaks;
the gannet plunges arrow straight
beneath the surface of the sea,
and on the hill, two startled deer.

Our secret apple tree was felled,
so out across the fields we sped;
above us lengthy northbound skeins
of noisy geese like flights of planes,
but further on, a brush with guilt:
the hanging tree, the finch we killed;
it's yellow body on the grass;
our sheepish glances as we passed.

They met by chance in Miller's bar;
a girl he'd worshipped from afar.
He'd hardly thought of her for years,
except by conjuring in dreams.
The shifting sands of life contrived
the sweetest time and then goodbye;
yet if we could, who'd say they would,
return and replay every move?

The past's another place they say,
of haunting hints and flitting shapes,
of laughter, tears and lessons learned;
it's where the future first was fledged,
in restless waters, singing winds,
with all our little wars and spills;
and time, it ripples on of course,
to background strains of Billy Joel.


(song)

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