Tomorrow, I will be getting together with Sheish to have a run through a new set of poems, so thought I would share an old one with you. And with the recent floods and the cool change this one seemed somehow appropriate. So here it is, Empty Garden… it was first published in The Black Rider and was also on our debut CD, The Stillest Hour. Just click on the title and let it play…
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i
We walk through the sun’s diminishing arches until we reach evening’s blue outskirts, then check-in to a cheap motel. In the room, you undress and point to the galaxy swirling above your hips. I ask about the brightest star drifting beneath your skin. That, you say, is a black rose I planted one morning, shortly after emerging from the flood.
ii
None of the many flowers planted take root. Flowers, like dragonflies, their pulsing colours, rise up and scatter in every direction. Frantic winds tear the remaining stars further and further apart. Although night has claimed the city, the moon still glows. Winter, or something known by that name, soaks through the last porous layers, the ones we imagined never growing cold. It is time to start removing your skin, you whisper, its garden of disguises.
iii
The moon continues to glow like poisoned fish. Two lovers kneel beside a lake, marvelling at the border of their reflections. Am I trapped inside his fiction, or is he trapped inside mine? the boy asks. Yes, she says, just look at us. The space between the flowers has started to grow. That, he answers, happened long before we met.
