Poem – Work out of Progress (By David Russell)

Work out of Progress

 

I suppose it must all go on indefinitely –

Just when I thought it had all been played out,

All become superfluous.

 

I am at the stage of universal discarding;

I suppose that many people see, through several decades,

What I pushed aside in a matter of months.

 

Discarding is basic to life: I am not dead,

So I must keep on discarding indefinitely;

It is also what keeps the others going –

 

Writing is a sort of discarding –

Some sense comes from putting something

Out into the void, the negative black

 

It may after all come to something –

Though not necessarily –

Not really necessary

Though nobody knew how to say so.

 

***

Childhood was a waterproof lining

Imprinted with the patterns of crossed fibres

Making jagged scratches on him

Who would have the perfect inside out

After folding it tidily and putting it in a drawer –

 

So many repetitions formed a furrow

In the musty darkness.

 

Wisps of ivy demarcating what was to be the next door

Levelled under a rubber cork corrugated roof –

All climbable, unlike the ivy climbed over.

 

[su_david_russell_speculum]