93. Park and Ride from Mid-November

but where

do we

escape to?

the light in people’s eyes

- naive but true projection

at this time

a few travellers

huddling together

in case

emptiness calls

everyone you know

is lost somewhere

oh, ripped paper

- that’s so corrosive

Indi un altro vallon mi fu scoperto.

Dante, Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto XIX, l 133

remembrance:

as the leaves fall

shrivel on the ash

You live under the sign of the provisional. Often with faint amusement over little debates: do you unpack this coral dress from storage as if, when the summer arrives in a few months, you’ll still be alive to wear it? Yes – but purely because you enjoy the zing of its colour today.

Denise Riley, Time Lived, Without Its Flow (Capsule Editions, 2012) p 36

There was also my grandmother’s pink dress. She put it on everytime she set to cook. “I can’t bear any other garment but my coral dress.” She put it over her head like a big bright overall, and then as the next stage, spread out the array of her cookbooks. Now I’m ready, I’ll cook you something that will really heal you. Oh, she did.

Odda Réal Constant, My Broken Life (Burning Deck, 1980) p 93

feelings & words then

rotting down together