Fishing Unknown Seas
Perfect.
Crystal.
Moment.
This singularity,
This when, this why, this wonder,
Where you shades into me.
Words falling so short now,
Stones cast at the moon,
Shadows thrown upon the wall,
Is all we’ll ever see,
The primal fire is hidden,
But still you burn in me.
These lines are hooks,
I’m fishing unknown seas,
Trying to catch the overlap,
Where you blur into me.
Did she leave you on a bleak day,
With reasons that weren’t why,
Did he grow cold one summer’s end,
And not return your call,
Did something joyous in you die,
And leave you feeling small?
Was there a day when you were eight,
You learned to hate and what your fate was?
Was there a day when you were nine,
You learned that cancer wasn’t just your sign?
Was there a day when you were ten,
You lost the one you’ve never seen again?
Is there some part of us the same,
Some inner language that we share,
Is there some star we both can see,
Some shadow cast of you on me,
Some single place where we both stood,
Some echo ringing in a wood, where we have been?
These lines are hooks, I’m fishing unknown seas.
18 January 2002
Lately
Lately I’ve been looking,
At the litter, windblown, in the street,
At the weeds, thrust green from this crack, that crack,
At the skies that come and go and come,
The seasons turn,
Beyond my catching.
.
Graveyard walks where years trail fingers across headstones,
This one leaning, drunk on duty, a soldier of the great war, known to God,
This one cracked, that one sinking,
Here words too blurred to read, the angel never blinking,
I have been looking lately.
.
There are things I cannot have,
Or hold, or want,
Times that won’t be, scenes I won’t see,
Touches unknown,
Futures scatter,
And matter no more than what the wind takes.
.
4 March 2016
More poems from Mark Lawrence can be found on the official website here
that thorn guy 