CHANCES TO LEAVE

 

Hunched over his ouzo, unshaven

as the steamer pulled away on visible blue.

A guy who's going nowhere, you said,

meets every dawn with negativity.

 

Later we sat upstairs while Kumiko picked

through rubbish on the beach for fun.

Less of that scrap, you shouted down,

not everything is sculpture! Then turning to me:

At school back in Denmark we found a purpose.

 

In the evening she floated unstoppable,

gliding between suiboko and ambitious cuisine,

played bamboo flute by paper lanterns

skirting the edges of your monologue ...

 

Those statues we saw were shameful efforts.

I'm an alcoholist, make no mistake

but I see the essence, remain at the centre.

She helps me out of taxis, into bed.

Calms my nightmares, closes my deals.

 

Next morning the steamer departed on time,

an unshaven man again at his table.

We smelled the placid hynosis of the sea.

He was still going nowhere, like us -

passing up the chances to leave.

 

 

An earlier draft of this poem appeared in Orbis literary magazine #171 Spring 2015