I always wanted to write poetry but I never really understood where I was going with it, until I read this (below), and then it began to make sense. I hope the writer doesn't mind me putting it up here. Of course, this picture tells a big story on the poetry front. I am a long way from home and maybe I always will be. Indeed, perhaps that is the problem, I never really quite worked out where home was, or even in which country. My daughter has that problem, being based in the USA (and perhaps my son will in time too). Here's the poem and a song too - in spite of ourselves, the poem and the song are strangely linked:
The moon is hanging aslant tonight
You tell me it’s just physics, that smoke
distorts vision as well as breath, that the world
is not turned upside down. The moon hangs
aslant though, and shifts slowly across the sky.
The night passes slowly: I sit outside,
watching the fires work the far horizon
reckoning the speed of the wind.
Last year we watched the snow approach,
a different haze, the softest screen. All across
the east they stayed inside, watching
through the glass, building little fires.
They were waiting
for a change, they are waiting still.
I'm waiting for you with my skin and bones baked hot
waiting to warm you through.You tell me it’s just physics, that smoke
distorts vision as well as breath, that the world
is not turned upside down. The moon hangs
aslant though, and shifts slowly across the sky.
The night passes slowly: I sit outside,
watching the fires work the far horizon
reckoning the speed of the wind.
Last year we watched the snow approach,
a different haze, the softest screen. All across
the east they stayed inside, watching
through the glass, building little fires.
They were waiting
for a change, they are waiting still.
I'm waiting for you with my skin and bones baked hot
