POETRY

Castle in the Air

We never built our grand house on the edge

Of the Pacific, close to where we first

Drew breath, but high up in the cliffs, a ledge

Glassed in, with balconies where we would be

Enthralled to watch it hit the rocks and burst –

The ocean that still flows through you and me

Like blood, though many years have passed since we

Sailed separately away to keep our pledge

Of seeing what the world was like. Since then

We’ve been together and done pretty well:

You by your scholarship, I by my pen,

Both earned a living and our two careers

Paid for a house and garden we could sell

For just enough to spend our final years

Out there where the last landscape disappears

Eastward above the waves, and once again

We would be home. We’ve talked about that view

So often we can watch the seagulls fly

Below us by the thousand. There’s the clue

Perhaps, to what we might do for the best:

Merely imagine it. The place to die

Is where you find your feet and come to rest.

Here, all we built is by our lost youth blessed.

This is your gift to me, and mine to you:

Front windows on a trimly English park,

A back yard we can bask in, but not burn

As we loll in our liner chairs. The bark

Stays on the trees, no wood-pile is a lair

For funnelwebs. Small prospect of return

Once you’re accustomed to the change of air,

The calm of being here instead of there –

The slow but steady way that it grows dark.

Sleep late then, while I do my meds and dress

For the creaking mile that keeps my legs alive.

In hospital I’d lie there and obsess

About the beauty of this house, and still

I love it. But I feel the waves arrive

Like earthquakes as I walk, and not until

I’m gone for good will I forget the thrill –

Nor will the urge to start again grow less

As always in my dreams I spread my chart

In the great room of the grand house on the cliffs

And plot my course. Once more I will depart

Alone, to none beholden, full of fight

To quell the decapods and hippogryphs,

Take maidens here and there as is my right,

And voyage even to eternal night

As the hero does, made strong by his cold heart.

-- Standpoint, December 2010