If you think that love has passed you by

I saw a rainbow today, a perfect hoop of colour in a grey day.
Above it and its cloudy background, the sky blazed with blue.
I looked around me but there was no one to tell,
no one to point and stare with, no oneÕs hand to reach for,
no quick exchange of smiles and glances.
And I hope you donÕt mind me being sentimental here.
It was windy and cold and looked like it would rain again. Soon.
So I went back to the office and
ate my lunch and answered the phone
and thought of other things.

As I crossed the park in the afternoon, the
damp grass sparkled dimly and the ground
was wet underfoot. Under a bad weather sky
the daylight was like [burnished/polished -
optional adjective for rhythm as necessary] steel.
A way off in the distance my eye
caught and snagged on someoneÕs red woollen coat.
The temperature rose by several degrees.
But it was no one I knew, just
another stranger.

IÕm thinking of starting either a club
or a new religion.
Raise your hand
If you think that love has passed you by.
Raise your hand
Form a queue to the left
Sign here
If you think that love has passed you by.

ItÕs not that I want some exceptional
passion; something nice and comforting
and warm would do.
Someone. I mean someone, not something. SomeOne. SomeOne.

IÕm getting older every day and there’s
no one I can complain to except my mother.
And I love my mother, but itÕs not the same.

IÕm thinking of starting either a club
or a new religion.
Raise your hand
Form a queue to the left
Sign here
If you think that love has passed you by.

 

without need for sleep or reason

I remember when Kennedy landed on the moon
wearing bright purple tights and touching down like
some ballet leap frog, floating down petal of a sprig
of a rose. And the family,

                                 I remember, sat huddled round the tube
of toothpaste he used and tried not to confine or confide too
much in any of us ourselves but just do a lot of watching
and waiting and smiling in white disbelieving nuggets
of certainty.

                     And I remember when Kennedy won the world
series with two games down the front of his pants
and how he just reached right in without batting
an eye, and a scratch and a tug of crotch field later
it was there, all shiny and sweating, the salvation
of the season. And of course

                                               there was the unforgettable
Kennedy shooting of Marilyn Monroe in the head right
between the hearts with lots of sugar thin wallpaper type of
notions that no one but a dog could smell it was so high
pitched even all the reporters treated it like it was just
another invasion. And

                                        I remember how when Kennedy
finally invented a cure for cancer all the little children
jumped right out of their graves, pulled all the branches off
the trees, and wove them into a forest and danced without
need for sleep or reason

 

 

Gina Mercer