Just a voice – a breath

Ideas flutter down like dead leaves

And a scent of old times hangs on the vapid air.

Only the occasional eddy of contrived emotion

Stirs the humus on which they fall.

Whirlwinds and forest fires

Are my barely disturbing symbols;

No longer can my heart or mind seed their storm

Or spook the Spirit of the Trees.

The dust settles as I finish.

Lifeless as when it all began,

They shuffle to the door.

I sit here with this marbled muster of the dead.

What purpose this bedraggled regiment of stone,

Deaf to the soundless trumpet-call to fight

From lips of chipped archangels poised eternally for flight?

Can they join up again, reporting bone to bone,

And come a-marching forth with lively tramp and tread?

One bears the tarnished old insignia ‘Here lies Ted,

Beloved spouse of Jane and ‘Dad’ to Jack and Joan’.

Could but this crumbling brigade undo his plight,

These sculpted platitudes bring back his speech and sight!

Another, creeper-clad and bramble-overgrown,

Says, ‘Jesus lives – he’s risen from the dead!’

But will he share his magic with this troglodytal host?

Will Ted rise with his family to morning tea and toast?

I’ll ask the gardener – he’s new – and certainly no ghost.

Things are not wrong but approximate

Nor evil but in error.

For sinful read inappropriate

And for major, minor.

The spectrum blends, reforms.

Now blue, now red, now green

Predominates.

Colours are petty norms

What purest white is seen,

Evaluates.