Near Evening by Bob MacKenzie As I face evening, I think of the day that has passed like the morning mist rising slowly a spiral staircase in a sunbeam weaving to a new level yet gone so quick, leaving a feeling that part of it - this day past, was missed and I wish I could return to the morning of my day; when my morning face looked through the glass as though waiting for me to paste it on smiling like an angler with a champion bass and waiting for me to take it and be gone, when I spoke to my face in the toiletry chest through the glass where it sleeps at night. I wish I could go back and start it all again, when we walked out the door into my day my world, my face and I together still, and see all the things I missed - see all the things that were fogged over and hidden: seconds around corners like rats or alleycats waiting till I pass before scuttling or minutes under rocks like slugs sliding away from me. Slugs which could have become cocooned caterpillars waiting to become hour butterflies at the touch of the right hand and fly. The first trip I missed a lot of active butterflies for fear of lifting the wrong grey rocks, only to watch them crawling cocooning off to fly for someone else. Now in this city life decays to crumbling walls and brown brown everywhere growing brown death of flowers and shrubs and trees. Within this city there's no open space no place where green can green be long where green can grow or green belong and brown conquers all. I've walked the streets of this city; I've been and seen those crumbling walls; I've written to warn of danger but who has heard my calls. I see evening flowing over the treetops like a black cloud shaving aerosol coming to straighten-stiffen the greyed and softer beard for the cutter and it all seems so much slower now like the calm before. I feel the chill of evening, fingers reaching not grabbing but caressing and inviting me to come from this cool dry ice light that burns my eyes, into the warm darkness ahead. I wonder at the ways that my face greys and pales. A friend has come with a game board to sit with me 'til evening comes to teach to me this game he brings this new game he has which we play while we wait together for the comfort of evening and later another day to begin. Evening is reaching out to wrap its warm shawl of darkness around us so we can sit in comfort with our new game our new game which we play while waiting together for the comfort of evening. The clouds have foamed across the trees and the fence and the garden and grass are dampening with dew, drops everywhere, and evening has reached grey arms out to enfold us like a mother with a suckling child. Game over; my friend asks would I care to walk with him into the evening home. published: Mainline No. 11, Fall 1972 Fellowship in Prayer, Volume XXIV, Number 4, August, 1973 |