And you see the two-crows-for-joy-pass that are
sitting on overhead cables and the evening moon,
a mere silvery slice against fluffy translucent sky.

And the remains of your school where you spent your
twelve longest years and lived through everything.

And the bus-stand you had to draw for your art-class in
yellow ochre or asphalt grey and the emptiness that
now occupies the place where a tiny café once stood.

And the tree where they fed you lunch before you
learnt to walk back home. And I thought of my
parents.

Brilliant people talking of the intricacies of their life and
the corruption of morals and the bygone days and hunger
in their childhood and their dead-dear-departed parents as
if to teach you what to talk to your children.

(And you are their child, so you speak their lines.)

Still returning home,

And there are rusty mammoth girders that outline
the sky like the derelicts of lost dreams and crossed
hopes.

And girls so flimsy pretty yet unsafe in the little
worlds of lip gloss and love affairs that you could
have smoked them into oblivion.

And the dry decaying dead leaves crushed with
varying noises and carrying a spent smell that clings
to your hair.

And the shy forest noises that violate your fixation
over sight and sound and smell and touch yes touch.

And I thought of my lover.

A primitive man who would
invade your aloneness on
insomniac nights and challenge
your assumptions of love and
your sophistications and fill
your ears with the four letter
words of his ancient language
that have begun to sound to
you like earth songs to which
your body awakens.

(And you are his love,
so you listen to his lines.)
On the way home, the small
lessons you learn of life. . .
Love, or the promise of love,
its lack of choice.
This large world.
And its littleness.