GHOST and ANCHOR

Me, here I am... still as rose after rain. Pretty and still. A deep sense of peace so pervading. A stillness that aches. I remember you on days like this. Only in autumn, when the air seems to smile at the humans running around looking for caffeine, trawling the sleepy strip mall, looking at the junk stalls, reading the paper and perpetually waiting for public transport to whisk them away to somewhere romantic; the next suburb over or even as far as past what may constitute the actual city limits. Somewhere exotic, with an exotic name - Rosebud, Rosanna, Reservoir.... somewhere in one of those estates seemingly dreamed up by a marketing company, with a fake lake that smells like duck shit and two day old grass clippings. Children and young teeners ride their bikes on a daily basis, as if by roster, circling the parks with playgrounds that look like they were drawn on the day with a hi-lighter. Ice-cream trucks that ring out with a sickly round of Greensleeves, dopplered to the extreme, calling the kids to mini-mountains of white pleasure, rainbow sprinkles and crumbly chocolate that you get everywhere but in your mouth. Skies perfect - perfected - by exquisitely ginned clouds. I always see rabbits. You always saw ducks. That's how it was from the time we first knew each other. Watching from our backs on the reserve grass lawns with no soul to say it was better to spend our time in more productive ways. What could be more productive than developing an imagination? These days always remind me of you.

So I find myself, once more, voice reaching out to ask you questions. On these still, quiet days when all I can think to do is watch clouds and drink whiskey from a paper bag, read poems out loud and examine the world inside of park lawns, I want to ask how you're doing.
NO.
I want to move beyond congenial speak, politeness, and straight to the part where a swear has five different meanings and to be a friend means to know exactly what that one bastard or fuck means. I want smooth talking where trains of thought are disregarded and sentences meld together. I want the boldness of childhood - unashamed compliments and truths that still belie your feelings. Everything is a web, gossamer and movable, swaying in the wind.

I want to define for you what that feeling is that moves me, when the globe is still lit by the unseen sun - just dipped below the hills - when you are standing in the woods, in a field, by a stream, and all around is silhouettes. The very air around you breathes like a sleeping giant, filling its belly with the coolness of the magic minute after sundown. To define that for you, my ghost, would be to slowly perfect my thoughts, to sit here sifting through piles of many coloured threads, trying to find the one that matches the one I hold in my hand. A treacherous pass time holding the promise of madness. I do it because of the brief second of joy that spreads like warm sun in winter through my old bones when i find the thread, and everything is even. I am happy once more. Relieved, fulfilled, satisfied by the completion of the act.