Colin Honnor

The Neophyte


Face stubbled like a burnt field
I should have asked him, cracked as his father was:
'he wanted to go and then came back
so I waited for him down by the river. . .'
and watching the gin and the lime slice drop
like an hourglass time or loquacious sun dial
there a poet is like himself somewhere
a face in a barroom mirror.
As the optics' hands move towards closing
and as the street lights come on
their faces stare from the photographs
the flying Uncle who went up with Cody
the birdcage boxkite capturing the blue
illimitably passionate air
it will escape to earth from and which
will escape from it to rage, wild and ragged
around the several continents and oceans
predicates of Mary's desires and Mary's colours
of the transient and unconsolatory blues
that all women sustain, the broken bread
and the shining hair on each head
reflecting back these chronicles like flame
that is powerless to congregate among
the weak and wistful, with their joined hands
and which flares into the arch of the unknown.