Mild Green, Grey Day Poem by Garry Stanton

A mother, maybe 25.
Child, maybe 3.

He swings on municipal
ground,
as she pulls and pushes
and blows bubbles
(a fairy liquid treat)
in the grey Glenrothes glaur.

Spheres of prismatic sky
drift homeward,
as he lifts his wee hams,
up, up…

She asks—can you catch one, can you touch one?

So he tries
as they rise,
his tiny, Babbage-confounding
mind,
lost to them,
not knowing of, not seeing
I,
the passer-by,

as a sneaky south-westerly
tantalizes…whines and whistles,
-go on, catch me! (dying) ,
-go on, touch me! (death) .

Poor wee soul, its
his only goal,
as the cosmos stands
fast, and slower than life,
the higher those spectrummed orbs
float…
(refracting, distracted) ,
the remoter the chance of
capture.

We have all sat on that
swing,
unknowing, unseeing,
as our futures breezed into
view,
not yet knowing that,
even as the bubble
is touched,
it is gone.

Copyright
Garry Stanton 2008