The Kingfisher

The Emmisary

There are memories on this street
caught like bugs in amber,
the concrete now cold though I recall it
warm under the summer sun and bent under
the weight of a trolley made from discarded pram
wheels and pieces of scaffolding,
The wheels still hum with our speed,
The trees lean toward the sound like the stern
Remainders of a vanquished forest,
The lawns overflow with kikuyu that
dangles its feet in the storm drain,
a torrent that once carried with it tennis balls
and the toe of an unfortunate child who long
since grew up, loved, and died.
The asphalt ripples and across it a girl rides,
a storm-tossed heroine on a pink bike.

I wondered how you would
carry these burdens as
I dreamed of them camped in
my hideout below the floorboards,
listening to ferocious cries,
slamming doors,
and the quiver of the wooden piles as giants
roared in the foreign land above my head.
I would send out emissaries of spiders,
build soldiers from the clay into which our
foundations were laid.
I would make offerings to the devils of the
dark corners, who never strayed toward the light,
who instead stayed to perch on the damp earth
and speak in riddles foretelling the times ahead.
I would piece together our secret histories,
imbued with the sweet smell of jasmine that
twined around the railing of our front steps,
I would climb each concrete tread like a mountaineer.

If it was steel I knew you,
a pattern imprinted on tobacco tins into which
washers and bolts had withdrawn with the lost
mechanisms of youth,
a poem printed in oil stains on the concrete floor.

I sit here trying to recall the small deaths on
the window sill, the cobwebs and cracked paint, 
the smell of the grapevine growing along the fence
in the last days of summer, 
the cinder block columns around our museum to
industry and suburban intrigue.

These are the artifacts of a soul rent by greed, 
Not for money,
But for the charming glances of the unwed.

My children play outside with the dog, 
Laughing as she tries to take a ball away from their clever feet. 
The sun shines on them through our fruit trees
and the smell of orange blossoms fills the air. 

The dog barks, her tail wagging with expectation as
They throw the ball through the air,
From the kitchen window
I watch the giant raise its head