Fragile & Broken flower
by Matthew Sweeney
[ poetry - august 07 ]
Fragile
The blue vase cracked and fell apart.
I lifted the shards from the glass table,
Then a Henry Miller painting left the wall,
its glass front smashing on impact.
In the mirror I saw the Picasso urn wobbling.
I dived for it, like a goalkeeper, or bodyguard,
grabbed it, and the other Picasso pieces,
to bury among the cushions of the settee.
I looked around at the marble table lamps,
the ornate clock on the mantelpiece,
the black dogs on the Chinese secretaire,
the framed photographs on the wall -
all had to be laid out on the carpet.
Then I went and dropped the eau-de-vie.
Broken flower
A cat is sitting in the tree.
A man is lying on the road
clutching a broken flower.
Crows circle in the sky.
All the wine is in the barn.
All the weather knows is rain,
rain, rain and more rain.
The cat is soaked in the tree.
The wine is dry in the barn.
A bus trundles down the road,
beep follows beep into the sky.
The man gets up with his flower.
The man chucks away his flower,
holds his face up in the rain,
extends his arms to the sky,
goes to piss against the tree,
tries to stagger to the barn,
falls down again on the road.
Cheek pressed against the road,
he thinks about his flower,
about the wine in the barn.
He struggles up in the rain.
The cat jumps from the tree.
A crow caws from the sky.
A watery sun appears in the sky.
The man wobbles down the road,
stopping to lean on the tree,
looking around for his flower.
He doesn't notice there's no rain.
He makes it to the barn.
He's standing there in the barn,
looking back out at the sky,
wondering why there's no rain
bouncing off the road,
why he can't see his flower,
only that stupid tree.
That tree that thrives in the rain.
That road that leads from the barn
to his flower, under a grey sky.
