A gemstone dipped in gauze

Michael W. Thomas



August 1960

Look through that window.

There you are, snug in the caravan bed.

Aberystwyth…funny name…starts out

straight enough, then gets tugged upwards,

twice.  Nightcap murmurs from mum and dad.

A new car?  Names mushroom in the pent air.  

Consul. Zodiac. One-point-Five.

You’ve done a bit on decimals.

A car and a half?  How’s that work?

Someone called Kennedy trying to get into

a white house.  Strange, a burglar announcing his plan.

Or is he like dad, losing keys, 

tickling an irresponsible latch?  

It’s been a day.  That mudbank,

the colonel-type happy as larry

at his words turned truth side out: 

you’ll slip, you’ll slip, I told you you’d slip.

That kite with its feathers like snow

on the window of paradise.  Late afternoon

and you at the end of the longest beach

pretending you’d just been born,

and the world swinging in a moment after.

On the horizon, one boat that you made unhappen

with a hoisted thumb.  

Now you stare up at the bedside light,

its mantle a gemstone dipped in gauze,

its breath the shush of a villain 

who’s trying to remember how to be bad.

Far beyond is something called the future,

which might be up where the kite reached

or caught in the hairs of the colonel’s moustache

or wherever that boat disappeared to

once you’d had your imperial moment,

reprieved it, let it roll along.

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