Sage
by Tony Beyer
1 now beyond the years it says a man should have in the Bible I’m not waiting for this life to end but know it must sitting outside on a hot evening in January anticipating beans and small marrows soon to be picked in the garden there are at least these gains to look forward to my daughter and son too are grown (her children nearly also) and I’ve loved the same wife since just past my own boyhood each circumstance like this is what matters most to the species individual satisfactions like poems are more debateable but still worth prizing within their maker’s intimate heart the public world for good or ill will progress or regress without me puffed-up threats of chiefs mute sufferings of underlings the planet’s ache under the heavy load of our progress governments would find it easier if we all dreamt the same dream at the same time eyes closed to the world sleepers unmoved by all but worldly goods and yet the desire for comfort is not in itself malign when even or especially the deprived are prone to it now dusk thickens and the temperature falls as of now the man over the road the man next door and I are all 71 my friend Jim around the corner is twelve years older our leader into the dark tide the smaller boats of our years bob after 2 one of the finer English poets John Clare was driven mad by the destruction of the countryside he loved small meadows amalgamated common land enclosed so the linnets robins wrens and larks that were his muse and subject survived but in lower numbers than in the records of that other great ornithoptimist in the preceding century Gilbert White and have diminished ever since their kind both locally and globally struggling with extinction along with the bees the frogs the mysterious multitudes of the dimming ocean mysterious and miraculous but no safer being so our earth that seemed so voluminous inexhaustible exhausted now the new unbreathable atmosphere we will bequeath not only to our children’s children but to those of all beings 3 in these days of rage what is there for our kind who so poorly learn our lives to pass on to the young the usual channels of wisdom knowledge information are congealed precept serves only to delude example to destroy the bullies come in all sizes and colours white to orange to brown depleting Africa flouting basic law to be tortured in Guantánamo is no different from being interned for re-education in western China the usual suspects are rounded up and dealt with as usual the stacked metal of the vehicle convoy blazes in the middle of the road melting tar bright enough to linger on the retina of the closed eye or even the missing eye under the patch the jaunty admiral claps his telescope to choosing what to see and not to see as universal a strategic policy as flies around the mouths of children who have nothing to put in them effrontery of the man desperate to be less forgotten than his predecessor or the man before him such a primitive impulse at least as ancient as the Iliad battlefields and heroes’ tombs time has smoothed to even ground the president is impeached so people must die the general is assassinated so people must die billions and billions are invested by so very few in obsolete concepts so the planet must die it’s like leaving the building after a performance neither the reviews nor your entourage can help only you know how good you were or weren’t 4 let the mad world pause and draw breath sidelined by viral peril cars nestled in garages malls and metropolises subdued tieless important men skype from home in the capitals of industry children and pets in the background and the occasional disapproving spouse sportsmen and women train alone in basements and on balconies the resistible outdoors expurgated from their selfies the backs of our hands such familiar territory crack into new unknown landscapes with the repeated application of soap
Tony Beyer writes in Taranaki, New Zealand. He is the author of Anchor Stone (2017) and Friday Prayers (2019), both from Cold Hub Press. Recent work has appeared in Hamilton Stone Review, Landfall, Mudlark, NZ Poetry Shelf and Otoliths.
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