Sept 10th - One final question

One final question


But there was no information
and so we continued...
the mirror ball at the dance palace spun down,
the band with fewer members than it had.

But there was no information
and so we continued...

the hot food van beside the pier

grown sinister, although still drawing a queue.

But there was no information
and so we continued...

tracking in the chill predawn

along some farmyard track,

cows mourning fitfully on either side.

But there was no information
and so we continued...

footsore, into some market town

a slow milkman waving

his long forgotten cheer.

But there was no information
and so we continued...

trains coming, going --
a lottery of timetables.

But there was no information
and so we continued...

pulling in at noon to a city grown still

and filled with dust;

a single taxi blinks its "for hire" lamp.

But there was no information
and so we continued...

up onto the cold dry mountain roads, where,

the taxi, failing, is shoved

ungrieved into the scrub.

But there was no information
and so we continued...

the taxi man with convert's fervour,

trading for food

at broken airstream trailers.

But there was no information
and so we continued...

onto the high plateau,

the metal dishes peering at the sky.

There is no information
and so I continue...

growing bleached and weather battered,

time taking me forward,
eating lizards, herding llamas,
salvaging parts and fuel

from empty villages.

A cold time I've had of it,

servant of one last machine,

searching with inhuman patience

day and day about, listening and calling out;

Hello, is anybody there?

Hello, hello -- we're lonely...

Sept 9th - An antithesis for every thesis

An antithesis for every thesis


We drove through Wombleton this afternoon,
and I am sure that cute and furry
Wimbles were, hidden in the bushes, decrying
the scarcity of ornamental trash,
the shortage of old newspapers, the lack
of plastic bags flapping wildly in the gaps
in chain-link fencing and I imagine
Uncle Etruria would charge the gang
to, after the everyday people are gone,
get out there with their bags and barrows, scattering
some crisp packets and tins and KFC
gnawed bones, to pretty the environment
and generally to give the place some tone.

Sept 8th - Who cares for the lichen?

Some lichen,
earlier this year...

Who cares for the lichen?

Who folds its laundry, warm from the machine?

Who keeps its kitchen clean and spits upon

a cloth to scrub behind its ears?  Who calms

the sorts of fears a lichen feels, insists

the environment is full of rough faced rock

and trees with sensually craggy bark?

Who monitors air quality between

those trees?  Who sees where a Vibram walkers sole

has gashed a divot from the matted growth

and gently smooths it back?  Who stacks dry stones

to form a wall where lichen fragments drifting

in the breeze drop into place?  Who meanders like

a tardigrade between the hyphae, pushing

eight legged from strand to strand?  Who stands to shade

it from high summer sun?  Who splashes dew

on it?  Who carves the hydrogen from water

using sunlight as a blade?  Who captures carbon

from the air and rearanges atoms into rings

of sugar, which leak through cell membranes to feed

their symbiotic partner in the dance?

Who leaches micro nutrients from stone?

Who lives, happily together alone, on any

handy outside surface?

Who cares for the lichen?