Yielding
Yielding to the push of my fingertips
The door opens swinging easily.
In the mirror at the end of the hall
A black silhouette gold edged
A moon eyed trout.
Caught. Mesmorised.
By the blinding gleam
Of the poachers torch.
And in the same beam.
Entrapped and transfixed
in the cold white
Electric glare. A fluttering moth.
I stand there. Staring.
My own reflection before me.
I look myself up and down
From one side to the other.
From one hand to the other.
Workmen’s hands.
Shit, shit on this earth
Why do I have hands like those?
Those pathetic absurdities
Hanging limp and loose
Looking as though they’ve been stuck on
The ends of those stick thin brown wrists.
Thick fingered flesh.
Waiting to be used.
Something to be done with them.
Touched and turned over in them.
A rough edged stone perhaps
Warily feeling for smooth
Surfaces fingered, stroked and pressed.
Every morning I step off the train
I make my way through
The green drab coats of men
Their hands dangling
In the morning air
Limp-pink, washed and cleaned.
Forgotten, flapping.
And down there on the black beach
Down past the turmoil
Of smoke and steel
And the cauldrons of molten slag
A dead sea gulls wing
Half buried, left on the shore
After the high waves
Had at last receded.
Made to flap by the wind.
Grotesque as everything is there
As though it were imitating
Its’ own once beautiful flight
And deaths mockery all that is left
To remind of its once graceful past.
Silently men merge into lines
Following one another
Through the murky dawn
The sky not light with sun
Cars slowly move and churn
The dust on the road.
Brown dust that rises and falls
Continuously. Unnoticed.
Staining the rooves
Of the houses near
The looming hulk
Of the steel works.
And as cars speed out
Along the road
The dust swirls
Up into the air
And is turned
Into a thick brown cloud.
Each morning
As I make my way
To the steel works
It’s the same.
Head down. Eyes staring.
Old eyes staring now and then
At young faces that pass by
The night shift on its way home.
And from beneath the brim
Of cloth caps unseeing eyes
See everything.
The door swings shut behind me.
All is dark again.
