environments

Roomination

Roomination

Roomination, contemplation of space;
four walls expanded beyond shape and size.
Perspective’s perspective so out of place;
distance confounds me and distorts my eyes.
Lost measures and linear illusions;
with points that vanish, leaving empty seats
as evidence; compressed conclusions;
unresolved memories, the pattern repeats.
She leaves with her red knitting in a bag,
the conveyor-belt of toast keeps burning;
Benedictine eggs and the daily rag;
room for thought; the matter’s quite concerning.
. Wait-staff, the living furniture at large,
. the Maitre de, the memory, in charge.

© Tim Grace, 22 December 2013

To the reader: Internal spaces are staged environments. Suggestive social scripts. Spatial storyboards that prescribe behavioural narratives. Static decor wrapped in layers of ambience. Light becomes warmth. Sound becomes tone. Smell becomes taste. A cast of unscripted characters becomes style. And so with warmth, tone, taste and style all playing their parts our senses come alive to the stories within.

To the poet: Mostly, a cast of unscripted characters will play their parts so well they remain invisible; leaving me to mine. Occasionally, from within the decor there’ll rise a character of interest. In this sonnet, it was simply a young woman knitting a red-scarf. She did nothing more than that… but that was unexpected.

Roomination

Roomination

Break of Day

Break of Day

This new morning plays a still symphony.
A soft blue haze gives the sun its fresh start.
‘Kookaburra sings in the old gum tree’
Birds of the woodwind harmonise in part.
Sounds of colour, yellow-tipped greenery.
A black crow caws, disturbs the wafting lilt.
‘Morning has broken’ splits the scenery.
The shadow of a cat’s meow casts its tilt.
The full-bloomed sun begins its daily chores.
Instruments of song re-billed to forage;
to business; the sound-track of sliding doors,
‘Good morning’ and the day’s gone to porridge.
. The morning’s pleasure is to softly seize;
. so handled with care and treated with ease.

© Tim Grace, 5 October 2013

To the reader: There are ‘good mornings’ … they come with suggestive pleasantry. The suggestive component provides for just a touch of the unexpected; ‘good mornings’ must be interesting affairs. And as for pleasantry, that’s a collective measure of surrounding comforts. Although simple, ‘good mornings’ are also very fragile events; easily damaged by the squawk of overt rudeness; the cat’s claw and the crow’s caw both shaft and cut in one fell-swoop.

To the poet: The creative zone is bound to time and place. For me, this temporal location is at its best in the couple of golden hours that launch the sun into its full ascent. That lifting can be strenuous if not approached in the right frame of mind; and made all the more difficult if disrupted by an intrusive influence. The frustration of a shattered morning is creatively crippling; truly the break of day!

Break of Day Break of Day