V Poem by jim hogg

I saw you in a dream old friend,
when we were dead and you were young.
You circled like an enemy
and vainly talked of other dead
and how, amongst them all
you still were looking good,
for someone over seventy.

No subterfuge in mind
I told you of the passing
of someone you'd never known,
and you replied as if you had,
with too much puzzling truth-
and, your stutter had been cured
in the afterlife's selective grace-
as both of us manoeuvred
alert and tense on dry white sand
by dunes that stretched away
to soft white floes of cloud
-so like a place I used to know,
where atheists could safely go.

You always were too full
of self concern,
and too inclined
to rate yourself above the rest
-under shields of modesty -
I wanted to protest.
And then, in the shimmering, sluggish heat
it seemed I saw your features change
and suddenly resemble for a moment
someone from a photograph
that surely was of me.
You threw a knife and rope,
and rhymed as if to mock:
"you knew this day would come, old man.
Accept this mercy while you can".
And I remembered laying blame
- only yesterday it seemed -
for all this wearing out,
down to a ragged end,
on recklessness alone
instead of Solomon's obsession.




15 05 12