The Roller-skating Man

The phrase pokes out
As childish eyes gleam wide
In the half-lit room.
"That man
Roller-skating
In the painting
There."

Familiarity oozes rest when my gaze
Moves to that same frame,
Easing in to pampered vision.
Mediterranean sky mounts blue on ochre stones.
A shadowed archway rises bleached
To prouder finials.

The sketched town that peeks
Is menial in purpose.
Plain strokes of brush
Have filled the space with abstract pueblo form
That then takes life
As shadow touches artist's shade
And moulds
A skating leg.

Imagined thoughts draw up as mercury.
I will not freeze them down.
Darling, darling eyes refresh me.
A roller-skating man.

©HC Hunter

Robinson Crusoe Island 2010

Tears of relief and gulps of fear
Chest hammering from the uphill run
Hands grasp nightsheets around their frames,
For the foaming cliff
Tracked from above
Now falls.

The wall roars full-mouthed
Pouring, smashing, driving through the dark,
Concluding the ancient laws of force.

Air buffets the slope then sucks away,
Dragging home from their shores
Into the vacuum of the deep.

Shush the children's bad dream cries
Shush the beaches' sadder ebbs
Sobs softly shake from skin pressed on skin
As knees stoop to the sandy turf.
The remains are life-breathed dust
And dust.

Whose young heart somersaults in grief and joy
Inside her promised woman's body?
Alert brown eyes flicker to her neighbours',
Seeing their grateful weeping stares.
The strong arms that struck the gong
Alarming all and prising them from their beds
Are grasped and raised.

Life
You have salvaged life, our island daughter.
A generation shall flow again.

©HC Hunter