A Poem a Day (601): Waiting

 
Waiting 

Black and white faces,
a campaign in the eighties,
on pristine cardboard wrappings,
stare out from cartons of milk,
the stuff that nourished them in infancy.
 
Here, they look out at us, no longer erased
from view, invisible, but present at our table,
and we are hopeful.
 
Disappearances are marked in numbers,
birthdays reduced to five. Two names:
the first and the last. So few characters to
represent a person. The missing. The unfound.
The ones who may still be out there, waiting,
their stories incomplete, the news items unwritten.
 
We wait for recognition, to notice one face
sitting in a window, crossing a busy street,
or just a fleeting look from a passing car.
We notice all the vehicles with their hazards on.
 
They wait, and we wait, and the time is endless
in the interim. They’re printing a new design today:
this face is only eight years old, one month missing.
 
The waiting drift past in the supermarket,
unable to acknowledge those eyes, while we read
all the details silently to ourselves, place the carton
in our basket, join the quiet hunt, hopeful
we might see them sometime somewhere
among the many faces we encounter every day.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 28, 2023

A Poem a Day (600): The closet

 
The closet
 
There’s an empty closet that bears your given name,
carved inside the hollow, wooden walls, nestled beyond
the mothballs, the sickly-sweet scent of lavender’s cloy
in nibbled linings through which your coins always slid.
 
We packed your many shaded things into black bin bags,
carted them off to be given to those who might need them,
carrying the memory of the unknown you on their backs.
 
Those unsellable items we still hang in your closet, all lined up
neatly, marking your daily presence in our humdrum lives,
like enduring flags on the startled face of the pocked moon.
 
If you hold them to your face, they still smell of you,
whispering picture-postcard memories cast adrift on air,
of holding our first bikes still, foam-hemmed bucket beaches,
stones skimming silent waters and curling cigar smoke.
 
A walking stick pokes out sometimes when you open the door.
At other times it slumps at angles, mimicks your jovial stance,
and I wonder if you’re moving it somehow just to prank us.
 
I tried to read your favourite newspaper the other morning,
but the words stuck silent on the page, didn’t lift so light as
in the way you could narrate a story, put flesh on the bone,
in your quirky fashion no reporter would ever think to try.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 23, 2023

A Poem a Day (599): GPS

GPS

It’s the main highway leading in,
they join the line, succumb, sublime,
sheep leading the sheep in line.
 
They are the silent forgetting time,
driving one by one as though in mime,
warming themselves against the grime.
 
It’s a depth of infinity you can’t lure.
It hides beyond the light bearer,
peers into the pitch and will endure.
 

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 8, 2023

A Poem a Day (598): The block

 
The block
 
He set it all on fire,
crawling, the urban light
stifled by night,
the all-seeing lamps dented
in straight lines walk on down,
stealing the air’s pure
camouflage.
 
Streaking the wind,
scraps of newspapers,
in big, bold letters,
speak a lack of gratitude,
unread.
 
They loiter as one, slunk
into the wall, osmosis funk,
rattle off, stick a fragrant smoke,
pass a domino effect;
no one remembers the hour
they were born, off the page,
now on the page.
 
Someone’s daughter lost her sight
behind the gate; someone’s kid,
she was found too late. A green,
broken bottle marks the spot.
 
No stages sound outside the wall,
loud voices subside into silence;
this isn’t a breakout call.
 
Dark cut-out windows glare out.
Tall-shafted. No lift will carry you here.
It gave in years before.

Painted smiles grin
from beer-stained brick.
Browned gum sticks in spiral patterns,
glitter seeking to create a sparkle.

But this grey cancer ravages
through concrete, digging holes,
cracks in forgotten time. Iron rails
usher like prison guards.

Tiles peel from walls
so thin you can breathe through them.
They keep you in.

Cameras forever on watch capture nothing.
It’s the sprawling conundrum of alleyways
that have stories to tell.
 
If you dial out, no one will enter here.
You’ll wait a lifetime for a lifeline.
 
It’s coming down in stages,
but this part still stands, a stooping,
skeletal shout-back to the 50s’
quick-fix housing boom.
Sold.
 
Most families packed up,
shifted miles from their relatives,
so only a handful remain, the grey crew,
steadfast til the bulldozers come.
 
It’s an anniversary for some,
a self-burial for the old.
 
Ghosts clamber the metal stairwells
by night, flown figments
of an imagination run wild.
 
We wilter down the evergreens,
not enough light to grow anything.
Life stagnates left behind. 

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 5, 2023