Nethergong

We three boys waited that night for the stars to arrive

While our ash damped fire fizzled to a finish,

They tardily attended like reluctant pupils

Attention seeking Vega pin bright -

A hole punched in the black blue paper of the night.

Slowly the others shuffle on late for lessons

Not one then a sudden milky swirl frothing up

And over the cup like classroom hubbub.

We strain, necks cricked until we catch

Ourselves wordless all ashiver.

We stumble torchless to the tent

Only a topped pine in the distance

And the soothing hum of cars speeding late…

A father, two sons,

How many times

Has this scene been seen?

Giving nothing less

Than the universe

And our own

Wonder in it.

Haptic

I.

When the conference confetti

has been swept away

What am I left with?

Awkward interrogations:

Am I making something

Or just

Making things happen?

Trying to grasp something, to connect

My hand to the back of my head.

To inhabit another’s thoughts

making mine more than before.

II.

Words. Words. Words…

We are hungry for sound,

Getting rough with it,

Feeling it bodily

Taking us to a dramatic

Elsewhere.

This afterlife of art

Making us adept at

Experience.

Exercising otherness

Losing and finding

Our self in that 

unrepeatable moment 

Of reflection.

III.

Culture is where we all grow

And encounter the unforeseen:

The thoughts that come up

Come out. And the edifice

We defend ourselves with

Is pared away and our souls

Boil over with the asking.

(This poem is an attempt to collect two and a half days of thoughts from the World Together Conference run by the RSC and Tate. I have used/taken appropriated the words ideas of, amongst others: Sirley Brice Heath; Cicely Berry; Jon Needlands; Carla Rinaldi; Steve Siedel, Frederick Douglass)