If you watch with care there are things to note.
Things aren’t necessarily the way they seem.
Within plays there are plays that make remote
our awareness of hidden plot and theme.
The secret subtleties of which I speak
are hard to notice in a moment’s glance;
they do their utmost not to be unique;
everything they can to minimise chance
of being noticed or of standing proud.
In their script there is no stage nor curtain;
no theatre, no audience, just a crowd
made blind to the subtleties of certain.
. Motion provides a stable place to hide;
. a refuge for those with disguise applied.

© Tim Grace, 12 January 2012

To the reader: In this period of writing, with resident status, I anonymously sat at the same table in a busy inner-city cafe. Daily, I had a vantage point that was unusual for its routine. And so, I began to notice patterns of behaviour that repeated themselves; in particular that of a plain-clothed policeman. His under-cover status relied on a steady flow of unobservant patrons buying “coffee-to-go”. My stability was his exposure… he became visible; he became the watched.

To the poet: Some poems are stubborn; this is one of them. It’s been over-worked – laboured. As with a drawing that’s been repeatedly repaired, its problems are made all the more obvious. The idea was to locate the object (an under-cover policemen) in a fast flowing stream of subjects (cafe patrons). This stream became an indistinguishable rush of them and they and their; added to by a liberal dose of that.

the watched