Elegy for a friend

i.m. Jenny Garnham-Fox

 

We carry images of one another

as a living likeness; sense this

as reciprocal reflection: not

as in a mirror— cold, sardonic,

and impersonal— but a perception

warmed by consciousness,

so that we do not feel alone,

trapped within our limitations,

but are reified as souls

that effloresce in acts of friendship.

 

When we lose a faithful friend

to death, our portrait dies with them:

we are diminished by the missing

likeness they internalised,

even as we contemplate

our after-image of the friend,

no longer present, yet alive

in memory until the end—

 

 

Night Train 

 

The back seat of a taxi,

impersonal as nights of rain,

wheels swishing through deserted backstreets

of an unfamiliar town,

 

is fitting prelude to the train,

a caterpillar tunnelling

a wormhole through the darkness

to the needle’s eye of distant dawn.

 

Across the open palm of land

where flood plains lie to left and right,

the segmented metal cylinder

articulates its way.

 

Above the timber sleepers

hacked from torsos of once graceful trees,

the carriages jolt forms,

grotesquely splayed, towards another day.

 

Oneirologists read train journeys

as metaphors of death,

inexorable impetus

that does not deviate or stay.

 

There is something sinister

in rigid rails and blind intent,

a sense of sheer relief

in the deliverance of journey’s end—