Time Poem by Haris Hidayat

An emptied picture frame lies on a dusty table.
A slight of a dead weight over,
roses in unravelled bunches
have in due course shrivelled.
Life has chewed up
the scent to whose name they once lived up,
and the roses no longer blush.
To little David though
they intimate a mother’s long lost love.

The forlorn house he sparsely dwells in
leafs through each and every day
seeing more petals scatter or flail,
whilst he is aloof and distracted.
Whenever I return for a visit,
he is in a perpetual attempt
to figure out different ways
of rekindling what has diminished
in distant past, irrevocably.
I stand on no grounds
to do David’s pining down
as infantile as it may seem.

Absence is reality far removed
from the minds of the remiss,
and so we continue
taking life for granted.
Yet, do you know
through you I was reborn?
The gate to the secret garden swung open
as you walked through my defences.

In the end every flower has to die
and yet it is easy for an uncaring mind
to look right through the seasons
where the beauty finds its cause to surface.
I hope I did not squander
the gift of the moment
I had with you,
and somehow managed to tell you
all I needed you to know.
Through your presence I know
I have earned a slice of knowledge,
which transcends the places that hold me.

New South Wales,9 October 2010