A Bolt of Black Cloth
by Steven McCabe
I imagined a colour the density of funeral bunting,
A bolt of black cloth,
A sudden black waterfall quickly dropping six stories,
Unrolled from a balcony,
The beginning of a voyage,
Negotiating darkness.
My father shopped at Dales for paper bags full of groceries,
I waited in the car listening to the radio,
I tried to describe a song called Eve of Destruction,
He looked at me in the rear-view mirror,
Columns of black smoke rose above the Pacific Ocean,
Like poisonous vines,
Morse code blinking through the darkness,
At night he came home as late as possible,
Then looking again into the rear-view mirror,
He repeated the name of the song,
‘Eve of Destruction.’
I pictured a wooden bowl in my chest,
Smoothed and worn by water,
& Climbing the stairs into this language,
Gazed, longingly, into a rear-view mirror.
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You are a genius！
Merry Christmas!:)
You are very generous and thank you. I’m not a genius as we know the word but your thought is kind. And Merry Christmas to you.
I very much like the Emily Dickinson quote about genius being the ‘ignition of affection not intellect.’ Meaning (I think) the aliveness of the spirit & caring emotions’ not ego or brainpower.
That would be a good sort of genius to be. I hope to get there! Thank you for writing.
Brilliantly done (as always). Have a great Christmas, Steven!
Thank you Richard, and to you as well!
Your visual creativity is wonderful, and your verbal interpretation always makes me think. I had a dream, years back, of standing with my parents, overwhelmed with sadness as we looked upon a ravaged landscape, a dark destruction.
Your post today brought to mind these thoughts that came while driving along a familiar route to town – ‘and while I moved forward, in the rear view mirror I saw where I had been, just now, yesterday and the day before, and the day before, and the day before that, and here I was, neither here nor there.’
Hi mn, Thank you for your impressions of the work. Fantastic dream you describe. Frightening, these thoughts. And wonderful too this thought, ‘…and here I was, neither here nor there.’ Very lovely.
Just because we move through time, so much seems destroyed. Really like looking at these again.
Thank you Sarah, yes, that’s a very interesting way to put it. ‘just because we move through time…’