YOU DRIVE YOUR CAR

You drive your car

and you see your life retold

in the smears arced on the windscreen

from the slow rain.

Here and gone. Here and gone.

But never really gone;

the smears are left behind.

 

You take the river ferry

on a windy day.

And the wavelets that appear, breaking

white on the water's surface,

stain the sky's reflection for a moment

before they disappear.

Then return, and the cycle

repeats. And repeats. And repeats.

 

From your garden in winter

you watch two squadrons

of great black Carnaby's Cockatoos

blunder and squabble across blue sky,

then the storm clouds invade

its purity, and its perfection,

filling the heavens with turmoil.

 

You pull out a book to read,

but find it's one of your own,

the embarrassing first one,

and shudder at its crass assumptions.

Stick to the later ones,

and forget your pride

(it's the first of the cardinal sins).

 

At last, you divide yourself

in your Theatre of the Absurd,

good and bad in opposing corners:

last one standing gets the prize

that bursts like a puffball,

releasing its spores in an ancient forest.

 

Chris Hubbard

2020