Ruby Rich


Roses bobbing on sighing winds
Love games upending gutter flowers
Holding heads high but buried in song
Seasons crouched, uncomfortable, lost in material
New days mixed with black soil
Missing children fading in rhyme
Deep lines lingering below the pulling tide
Chapters unread telling stories of what will happen
How will the mood hit you in your wisdom?
How will the realisation face you in your sleep?
To grasp the warmth of day means your back is turned
All the creatures drag their voices out onto the street
We can hear the fingers tap against the pane
Do you rejoice in the echo against the evening?
The bones creak and we acknowledge the old books
The roads are all newly tarred and they slowly melt in the sun
The heat hits us as we touch this continents shadow
Didn't we chose this madness in the store?
This electric red that paints our cheeks
Ruby rich and full of wisdom
We once knew everything of the tide, of the water
We once knew of the fish that swam east
Yet nothing is fixed and the oxygen remains stale
So the birds hold themselves in the sky
The outlaws dress themselves in the suits of the dead
We couldn't hear the songs of christ
We couldn't right the wrongs of the father's
Babylon withered with the disease of gods
The soldiers filed past the dying king
It was all he could do to wave
The water silted with sand and flecks of gold
Up on the hill the young men learnt how to build their castles
We realised we needed and ending for our start
A beat for our song
We lay down with the curves of one another
We traced the outline of one another's bodies in the dark of night
We climbed into the canoes and paddled as the reeds flew with the current
I tasted what it was you had to give
I heard what stories you had to tell
Making me promise to share no secrets with anyone
Except with the dying summer
The waves creased the water and the shore sang out songs
I could hear sinning words and taste the sweat of what we had done
Sand was stuck to our wet legs
Falling in love? Neither of us expected
In the distance the freezing memory of reason shattered
The steps to a dance was forgotten
Certain smells were embedded in our memories and pasts
We could taste the air, we could taste the history
And the rose bobbed in the sighing wind
Moving like a drowning soldier



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