Tread marks

He dropped his bundle in the main road.
The traffic lights were turning green.
Countless pages lay strewn on bitumen.

Three strangers nearby
became friends in that moment
or to be more specific,
a desire to help him linked us.

Without exchanging words,
we gathered them all up
before the tread marks of anonymous cars
left their indelible comments.

He smiled at us with stunned gratitude.
We quickly went our separate ways.

**

ANZAC Day

Blue in Green
Davis Evans Cobb,
Chambers and Coltrane
the sound of sundown
muted horn
timbre of heat and smoke
in tall grass
a saffron strip of fading light
the tree next door
shedding purple petals

**

Stage Four

He made this dry announcement
and our world shrank.
A timer had crudely been set.

We move through space
with worries and enjoyments
fooling ourselves
it will always be the case.

“I’ll start with chemo
and see what happens.
I don’t want to spend
my final months in bed.”

This statement encompassed
all that can and can’t be said.

Then friends and family gathered
for dinner and a chat.
You examined his grey face.
Imagined the ribs
now protruding from his chest.
His growing feeling of absence
from a world which will continue
without him.

And our guilt at moving on
a corollary of that.

 ———————————————————–

Mark Mahemoff is an Australian poet, critic, and psychotherapist. His next book, Beautiful Flames (Flying Islands Press), will be published later this year.

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