The text arrives an hour too late. It could have saved her life, but you only hear her voice, see her hands. You wanted to save her; she gave you such life. She was a presence, a blue goddess. Yes. Blue. Was she happy? Was she well? Was she negative? Was she positive? Did he judge? Was she electrons? Was there something in the air, in the offing? Planned? How can you know anything about the future? You can’t. And yet. What’s intuition? What’s psychic? Advanced, subtle intuition? I don’t know. People say that and then say something.

*

Say something. You are all the way here. Toes march. Legs swing, surge, pivot. Hips circle. Enough. Body balance. Torso. Take movement snacks to help you through the day. In your head. You have been. There’s a working group for tragedy. We don’t see it coming. Scramble. They’re only ever ideas. Until.

*

Until. Stars sparkle. The moon rises clear each night. The sun balances shade. Seas crash. The forest weeps slowly enough for us to gather grief. The frost gallops in and out again. We realise the chill. Okay, I must make a start. Get my spade and cut through to waist height. Doesn’t take long to be out of my depth. Then I get a ladder, keep slashing; it’s not the downward movement of old. Because I want to get away. Chase the shuttle, one spade width at a time. I can spend an hour a day on this; the shuttle’s loaded with billionaire’s money, but I’ve got persistence. I’ll get away. Pass the moon. Hail the sparklers. Look back at where I used to be, as distant from my limitations as it’s possible to be. And one day embrace the sun.

*

The sun told you to wake up. It’s always awake, what are you waiting for? You only have to make mouse steps, edge to the dance. The long slow notes, warm breath, cold breath, even tone, intonation tonguing. First. Open the case. Hook the strap around your neck. Put the reed in your mouth to wet. Whilst you hook on the body. Attach the neck. Align with the body. Place the reed on the mouthpiece. Centre the ligature. Attach to the neck. Align. Breathe. Make offering to silence. Before any notes.

*

Any notes will do . . . tonight, we celebrate Dr Smith, a pillow of society . . . frilly, floppy or firm . . . a basket in a basket . . . look into you . . . a constellation of blankets . . . they make lovely shadows . . . shell button, shell-shaped . . . based on a coracle – I only think of bailing out . . . the light folds gold . . . a cardboard xylophone . . . the view is in the artwork . . . see its 3D depth . . . the inscription of rock . . . red sepia lichen impression . . . bring the stars here . . . the wrack zone between land and sea . . . glyphs . . . at lunchtime he walked around in circles . . . echo . . . crayweed once prolific.

*

Once prolific, you can choose. A foot with eyes. The colours of shadows. A horse made of oak leaves. Coming fool circle. Hunting metaphors. Looking to live somewhere. The soot in your wrinkles. Not waiting for headlines, “A man in Eketahuna enjoyed a day in the garden and when his kids came home from school he played football with them.” Release. Swinging free. A Saturn cazimi. Get your time machine working. Was that a little too meta for you?

*

For you: feedback loops, repetition, self-familiarity, fractals and self-organisation. The butterfly effect (that poets posited?) is a thing. Imaginary science. What next? Deterministic but unpredictable. The Lorenz attractor itself resembles a butterfly. It functions each which way. Science makes poetry. Differential equations. Horizontal temperature variation. Forward osmosis. Nonlinear, like contemporaneous time.

*

Time, the past like rubble. What broke. Something had. A memorial, a season, the length of the trip, the fallout of war, how long it takes to write a letter. “Thankyou for wonderful time.” Is time wonderful? What is it – we ask – other than the measured-ins? It’s time to take things to ourselves, to memorialise . . . but that’s no good, I’m using the word to define the word, and that’s no good. Good, parrot. Time is like a parrot, it just repeats. Good parrot.

*

Parrot is bigger than me. I sit and stare at it. It stares at you, sideways. But who are you and why did they let you in here? You could be bad for the place. You might rip up the seats (like a parrot). Okay there are no seats, just benches that it would be hard to destroy without coming prepared with an axe, and I doubt you’d do that (but you never know). You might tear up the cushions (with your parrot’s beak), but there are only a few of those, and why would you (but you never know). (There are only two cushions and actually they’re rather flat pillows, not especially new, nice colours [but you never know].) Perhaps you came to look at the parrot, like me. Did you know it was going to be here? I didn’t. I just woke up this morning, came and sat in my bare room with the huge hole in the floor and a single chair to one side, to see what I’d see. You mean you didn’t do that? Are you saying I’m weird or something? Does the parrot know you already? It looks like it does; it looks at you knowingly. Do you know the parrot? Have you planned this all along, this . . . this witnessing. What have I done? What do you think I’ve done? Because I can tell you I’m innocent.

*

Innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck . . . I thought it said ‘chough’. The Cornish ones landed on emblems, but I don’t remember seeing them in the garden. I recall red kites swooping over the burras, cuckoos in the spring, robins in the winter, pigeons always, a brother and a neighbour collecting them, breeding them, setting them free, calling them back. Ai bod ai pediol bod – they flew to Wales to see Shakespeare, who was hiding in a donkey jacket, like a council roadworker, gripping a shovel, saying nawr ’te in that glutinous, colloquial way, counterpoint to the way Father said now then when laying down the threat, like birdsong from another district – the New Zealand bellbird singing a different song with the same four notes, octaves and fourths; I preferred the birds.

*

The birds have longer tails, in your mind. The buttons are bigger, round, pearly yellow and red, with four holes, but you can put your hand through them – what good would they do you? The canvasses are larger in your mind. And more robust – you can gesso over them a thousand times, and the frames will barely buckle when you fling them down in disgust at your work. I know you do that. The aerials . . . wait, is everything bigger? Is that what you are? Just a materialist? Oh you’re tired. You want more life, is that it? Okay, go on, the aerial, make me see it. It reaches up way up, past the tallest – it wants to pick up a signal, I’m getting, of her, the one who’s died . . . recently . . . she’ll be talking to you, describing the junk up there and how she thinks she’s going to crash into it, but then you get used to the fact that it’s floating through you, you’re not corporeal any more, you look at your hands and dust slashes through it, you wince, but only out of habit, then you start to enjoy it, like skating, like ski-ing without poles, like jumping, but you keep going in the jump, willing yourself forward, that’s it, you only need your will she says, she’s talking to you, like I am now. I like the aerial, it’s the coolest part. In the exhibition.

*

Exhibition epic: the letters of Gustav to the man he never met, whom he idolised and discussed his life choices with, down to which words went with which images. Gustav read a paper about Barlow and decided he was an authority and consulted him. But not just about art. He asked him what he thought of people he’d just met, describing their features, like the man in the bar who broke a glass in his nervousness, but eventually relaxed and invited him to a club. He was intrigued, especially by their conversation about about, about the word ‘about’ and what that was about, what it could mean, just one word! Gustav imagined going to visit the guy in Cork, to see his sculptures and paint or write something in response, he was invited there, too, and he looked forward to it, initially, but then he sensed the man was needy, and he didn’t want to be needed, but still it felt like a wasted opportunity for friendship and collaboration. He hoped Barlow would understand and was sure he would. He never sent the letters, but kept them in a clichéd shoebox that always made him think, not just of feet, but your legs.

*

Your legs are tentacles, all six of them. I didn’t start it. I just added them up, with their weird perspective. I can’t add perspective; I ignore it. Some things you can’t quantify, like glue, oh you can in a pot, but not once it’s on the page. And why’s this glue here, what’s sticking to it? The feeling of hurt? The little boy in me crawls into my lap and goes to sleep. I am his grandfather; he’s safe now. The air has a sound like air-conditioning; no matter. The birds are waiting; no matter. The text is waiting . . . the text.


Note:
burras – Cornish dialect word for the large mountains of sand which form part of the waste product of China Clay mining.