Sitting at a small table on the balcony, drinking wine and writing draft after draft by lamplight. More and more incapacitated, his head snapping backwards in spite of himself, the boy was stranded in the waiting room. Having dropped the heap of leaves, the little girl beseeched her sister and parents to help her pick them up again. –You should try writing a novel, he told me. Dear is the honie that is lickt out of thornes. Desire’s thrown into confusion; overwhelmed. Full moon above trees in the long window. Stepping down – plunging into water. The stranger he’d been gazing at earlier suddenly came over to speak to him and then fetched a nurse, insisting he should be looked after immediately; her compassion caught him, so unexpected.

*

To be sung: ...that the lost might life inherit... A sheet draped over the chair. We sat at a table between two banana plants, a pool of water gathering underneath. A banner of flame in the night sky, above the treetops and streetlights. In a shop on the way to her home, she chose a circular mirror for me to purchase; in another shop, fuchsias for herself. I dreamt that the artist – most famously narcissistic of her generation – had died; yet later in the dream I encountered her at a private view. The old woman turns a radio on at the back of the lecture hall, loud static interrupting the discussion. He arrived at my door, his suitcase full of fish bones. On the far wall of the living room, a sheet was draped around the mirror. Between the twin rocks, a reddish light – as if scumbled over the pond’s surface. –A good amulet, he said, invoking, gathering protection. The small silver hand was engraved with letters, signs. –The motherfuckers won’t let me sing, the woman said at her friend’s funeral. Around the frame, a pattern of stars, or the names of angels.

copyright © David Miller, 2002.