Winter ode

Weak wind through a Soho passageway
just manages to lift
a couple of fluffy seedlings,
a lost, erratic foodbag,
a mad black rook with a quiff.
All afternoon I watch clouds drift, consciousness drift,
from behind the glass in a chrome and brass café
my mind filled up with leaves
and deceives,
and, broke, ignoble-feeling,
in trance, in dream reflection
absolving myself of ground-bound grieves:

the time, for instance, I swept
without a sound
around the knotted oak
outside my first-year student room (inside, I half-slept):
in soft light flooding golden, supernatural
I could see
the brilliant, living markings of the tree
—its wisdom—
with me in love, a curling bridegroom from Chagall;
or my mind that stark November with the white gulls sailing free,
on currents cold and invisible, clear—
I looped the loop and hit the brakes,
I did a u-turn in mid-air.
O, it was fine, it was lovely—so much better than ecstasy!

But the waitress, black-clad and sneakered, who sees me
blankly staring
as she brings to my table
3rd-ordered black coffee,
double strength,
what does she know of the chain-smoking stranger
from whom, misunderstanding his clumsy remark about her accent,
she wheels in apprehension?
As clouds drift and consciousness drifts
and I light up another year to smoke I wish she knew
—I sip the bitter drink—
I wish she could have seen me when I flew.

(November 30th 1998)