A kiss in sunshine

 

Vacant faces

staring out at nothing.

Glancing at departure boards

then back

into the void beyond.

Pacing feet race

from ticket stall

to where their

trains await.

Pushing

to get a better seat

on their journey

into destiny.

 

I sit watching the man.

His face painted with misery.

It's a mystery I want to solve,

a conundrum. What makes

his heart grow so cold?

 

Did he just watch love

leave on a track

to someplace far away,

or did he forget his way

in life, and end up

at the wrong station,

on the wrong day?

 

As I'm pondering this,

a kiss in sunshine walks

along the platform

opposite mine,

and I wonder where

their life is traveling?

 

Are they off to start life

in the freshness of a new

sunrise

that is outshined

by their own inner glow?

Are they just taking a break

to a place of rest, a beach

with windswept waves,

or a place of rolling

green meadows?

The smiles on their faces

say that their days

are going to be great.

 

I sit and watch, and wait,

and as the light dims

on the day,

my train arrives

I embark on a journey

that falls onto my page,

as the countryside rolls on by.

Bags for life

 

Greying hair, he sighs,

another bag under the eyes.

That’s too many bags for life.

A straitjacket of fear holds

his thoughts firmly in place.

He can't even put his faith in fate,

since fate has dealt hands

that always seem to land too late.

 

Old man time etched into

the cliffsides of his face, another wrinkle,

dimple creased, where his frown has sat,

the upside-down smile

where life has intersected with

too many crossed pathways.

 

A voice. Underneath the chorus

of disapproval, a singsong croon,

from the halo crowned moon.

 

"Age, you say, ha, you are merely a baby.

Barely a speck of a cosmic day. Look to me,

I've been here since before humanity

climbed from the tides, but I’m beautiful,

and the light reflects from me"

 

The man,

through tear stream rivers,

whispers back

 

"But you are just rock, frozen and stark.

Yes, a light giver in the dark, but you can

never understand the human hear.

How it yearns for so much, yet earns so little,

How it burns so hot, yet its bones are brittle.

The scars I bear, maps to nowhere."

 

Sweetly the luna symphony sings,

as the stars swing, blinking in the background.

 

"Do you not see my craters,

the pain I've endure, the impact from afar,

from so many rocks cast at my heart?

The years that have worn slivers

where sandy dust streams in rivers.

But I still pull the tides, I still ride the skies,

I don't hide my scars; I wear them with pride.

For my song wouldn’t be reaching you now

If I'd bowed to every knock down"

 

The man blinks back the tears,

looks again, in the bluish glow,

at the face he once knew,

and sees that the smile

is still hidden somewhere below

the frown, and those bags

contain so many stories within.

And for the first time in so long

his smile flips the right way around

and his heart grows.

Heavy rain at the graveyard

 

Heavy rain at the graveyard

as the tears swell up. Harder

they fall - a cascade hitting

the grass carpet. Sharp stings

in her glass heart. A mournful song

broken apart and left to wilt like the

flowers on the next graveside.

 

Slate veil over downcast day.

Can someone chase the demons away?

They creep from between

headless stone statues,

rain-etched memories

carved into cracked skin.

Tombstones to lost homes

where souls no longer live within.

"Can someone rehome

this stray heart?" she moans.

 

A mother shouldn't

have to grieve for a lost son.

A song should be singing,

one where hope lives on

in neon colour overcoats.

A starling should be flying,

under a bright sun.

Rays landing on smiling eyes.

 

But only grey stains her view.

A memory of rain,

the pain of losing you.

The stabbing rhythm

that reminds her of how you lay slain

at the end of your own blade.

 

"Protection" you would say.

Disrespecting the memory

of sun beam smiles.

Twisting the sting

into something

so tragically

final.

 

Heavy rain falls at the graveyard.

A mother stands as her world stalls.