The Project Poems Part I
HOUSE - Between Shadow and Tomorrow
Our family is a traveling family
From memory emerges a picture
Of my father’s father
I am about seven years old
Laying down my hand
Carefully
On a red plush armchair
Where this stony colossus
Sits
Puffing away smoke screen
From behind steamed up gold-rimmed goggles
He glances past me
Through a pale window
Trying to reach indescribable wide vistas
I never heard him speak
His posture said it all
He played a waiting game
.
In former days – according to my mother -
He always used to muse about tomorrow
With broad gestures underlining massive plans
His stirring imagination
Playing on gorgeous Dwelling Places
Wealth and New Horizons just in reach
Are legendary and regularly memorized
Privately
We snigger
For somehow we understand
We understand this need for thrilling trimmings
.
Our family is a family of restless roaming hearts
Some build a boat just for themselves
For pilgrimage around the world
But that boat
Nearly ready
Is readily disposed of
And they begin again
From scratch
With an old carcass
And oceans of time
In their deepest thoughts
Already miles away
When bodies still fast aground
Fixed and fastened
To that spot
No one called them Sisyphus
© 2002 Tine Wilde