Back in the 1970s, in a flat in London, I and some friends held a séance. I received a message from, supposedly, a guardian angel, and I remember exactly what the message said (the spelling is deliberate because that's what I saw): "I did not tell you to be a carayer of road maps. I want you to walk now through the streets of life exactly as it comes".
I was a little disconcerted by this as at the time I felt life was a rather dangerous place and the idea of embracing it full on scared me somewhat. Over the years I've come to realise that it's not inherently dangerous at all - it is what you make it, which seems to be what the 'angel' was trying to tell me.
So I wrote this poem, which is about my current take on the streets of life. Sadly the video cuts off a few lines before the end of the poem.
Read at the Puzzle Poets 2 November 2015
Where I walk
The sweet hum of the tarmac on the streets of life
Mixes its colours on a palette of sensualities;
A bouquet of violin, amaretto, uilleann pipes and honeysuckle,
A rainbow of architectural arpeggios and glistening glissandos
Accentuates the beat of my soft-shoe shuffle...
My soft-Schubert shuffle.
Where I walk
Raindrops sharpen my perception,
Each miniature Cyclopean retina
Like a millefiori glass eye stolen from the curio collection of Antheia,
A panopticon enlarging the minutiae,
The shag-pile pine needles, the busy beetles,
The moist mosses and the crumpled petals
On my path beneath the fecund trees.
Where I walk
The crisp crunch of the crystals
Leaves snow-bound ghosts of my footfall,
Webbed-lattice etchings of rubber sole,
Timeless, benign, without malice or threat,
Simply a sign that this was, and still is,
The path that I chose.
Where I walk
The rocks re-arrange in stanzas of solidity,
In reassurances of eternity,
In cascading cradles of fearless symmetry,
In hexametric rhythms of the music of the spheres.
Where I walk
The seabed rises to caress my soles
In the warmth of perpetual shallows,
Finessing the unpredictable certainties
Of water which gives us life, and takes it back.
I float with the flow
And stand firm on the breaker
Embracing the vortex of unpredictability
The constant chaperone of serendipity.
If you will walk where I walk
The autumn leaves will fall in cadences of sunset;
The wineglass will ring to the distant snap of the twig;
The moving finger will scribe a dance of delight;
And our universe will sleep in peace.
