Flagstones
Rainbows upon flagstones
cast lights amid blue rain’s faint splash,
sparkling streams in the bald air.
A wealth cascades. We limit darkness,
but we could still be anywhere.
Stairs range upward, so we alight.
Here, the late train speeds a single track,
eels its way over low-drawn verdant hills
in a welcome rush of green.
lifts all the strewn parts, recycles lives,
the essence of the inside we carry out.
We are short here. We lack distance.
But we are among the many passing through.
To those left behind
We hold vigils to remember the gone.
We print pictures of the missing in a rescue bid.
We pass medals to those who showed their mettle.
We place cut flowers on a gravestone’s echoes.
We carry in our hearts every face who mattered.
We listen. We respond.
Because sometimes there are no words.
We offer the warmth of our arms instead.
Lines
scrap of fine hair and a mid-line,
two sticky-out ears. It grins back.
strangely familiar. For a few seconds.
And then it slides. Like tears.
It runs, drips into itself. Now faceless,
the window stares back at you.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 28, 2023
turns its glass eyes to the moon,
closes both doors, seals itself off.
of the only book ever to be read.
So many tales left untold.
and a cold draft lances through,
trips up the stairs two at a time.
thankful for the scraps on the step,
listens to winter’s chill settle in.
on top a tiled hat sits askew,
offers a cosy nest for the crows.
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.
from view, invisible, but present at our table,
and we are hopeful.
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.
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.
in the interim. They’re printing a new design today:
this face is only eight years old, one month missing.
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.
The closet
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.
carted them off to be given to those who might need
them,
carrying the memory of the unknown you on their backs.
neatly, marking your daily presence in our humdrum lives,
like enduring flags on the startled face of the pocked
moon.
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.
At other times it slumps at angles, mimicks your jovial
stance,
and I wonder if you’re moving it somehow just to prank
us.
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.
GPS
It’s the
main highway leading in,
they join
the line, succumb, sublime,
sheep
leading the sheep in line.
driving one
by one as though in mime,
warming themselves
against the grime.
It hides beyond
the light bearer,
peers into
the pitch and will endure.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 8, 2023
The block
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
