The Long World.A Poem by Ken Simm. Someone coming. The memory of a song thrush singing sometime in my personal history. A love of nature alone. Wet days with slanting rain. When Icarus could not fly. Then I wished through my books. Literature as an object desired. My language. Walks along the ridgeline. Wishing for someone to show this to. I’ve played this part so many times. When I was young and lived in this land. When I was young and convinced of the rightness of things. These were my joys. I considered them once. I heard the voices that weren’t there and I watched the landscapes change. I spoke only when the sun rose and slept when it set. I dreamed of a world with you. I didn’t know who you were but I watched the wild horizon for changes, for hopes. My position in the world changed. I learned and then I trained but still I didn’t know. I knew that Leda loved her swans. I knew the rightness of looking. I watched the light on water shine into your imaginary eyes. I heard the gentlest of sighs from someone just out of sight. I learned the music of seeing. This river of my past changed in the shadows of evening falling. The last of the sunlight drifting across my single thoughts. The forest blew its wind thinking. These gestalt statements set in the filigreed branches of trees and matters of childish perception. The last insects falling golden into space The swan almost singing. The dissection of it by candlelight. The running away from bent drunks. Hiding from drunken violence as the deep sun appeared from behind ominous grey clouds building in a frightening sky. Finding a landscape of natural safety in a world of childhood fear. The visits of the spirit. The first thoughts on the first love. The invisible monster crashing through the woodland. The first of my secret places. A kingfisher, halcyon still on my foot, fishing. Dry days and a weasel friend. The rafts of summer, tied with old stolen rope. The illness and the still seeking why. The strut stuttering illness when it all went away. When I grew slanted. The small deaths and the painting of a portrait. A teal in my room. Another bird in the shed leaning towards its own death. He likes birds, they said. The single dead tree in a lake. A dog hanging from it. A river of green and high flowers. The secret small paths of Moorhen and willow. The old rusting car where she showed me. The words I discovered that no-one else knew. A girl shining. Concertos and symphonies played and scratched. Then taken and destroyed. He learns too much. He is, he will be, a drooling idiot. The words burned in a heathen temper When Grendel was a hero of my life. Tricks from a magician with string. Show them to you with the words written. These perceptions hit my childhood emotions and flowered into darkness. I watched an animal die in the last of the sunset. I saw all the young males hunting. Drawing a first love and not knowing it wasn’t real until now when the love was suddenly there and here. Making a drawing of it, the first love. And finding someone finally to show it to. Only now See, look. This is me. I rejoiced to hear strange movement in the dark places of my soul. And I listened for the monsters amongst the trees. These were my joys. My loves before you. Manning the falcon. Flying. Secrets. No one remembered, but one, saying I love you. She died. The votes then of my feet in each step away from home. Away from my familiar landscape. Finally away from my country. Nothing here for me in any tense or intent. Only ghosts silently covering land across the dusk. An owl in the silent fading light. Hunting for the joys of my life. Foreign places and learning. Learning how to please and starving in the holidays. The high hot south and the sunflowers. The Latin and the arguments. The large, slow history river catching an afternoon sun. The larger deaths. And preferring them alone. Still not showing. Then quietly, slowly, gently, the return, knowing more. The strings of a sunrise capturing my fading heart. The wonder coming with the light. Appearing on a horizon of loose hopes. The birdsong repeated. The start of loving myself once more. Hints of you out there in the fields, waiting. A brief fragrance hiding on a soft breeze. A kiss in the late afternoon. And a joy in the wonder of knowing. You came. Then you were here in bright loveliness. We loved and were gossamer fine. And I showed you all the wonders of my experience. The joys of my long world. Then you saw and then you loved me. © 2013 Ken Simm.Author's Note
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Ken Simm.Scotland, United KingdomAbout'I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience' Thoreau. For all those who .. more..Writing
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