Prodigal

You have wandered the earth
for a hundred years
childless and sainted,
with a chalice in hand,
and finding in a valley
one swollen night
the mythic town
you dreamed of in childhood,
and finding in a valley
chrushed rose and bourbon,
foxbrush and chocolatewood
and angelos in the brambles,
your searched for firelight,
your wifing candle there
with a hand of light
laid on your dropping arm,
finding those with surety
as a blind cadenza lands
its one ancestral chord,
you fall giddily among
a few drowsy insects
and kiss the earth
amongst their glow
and let out a noise
that has been finding
its way back to you
through some winter
on some dark night
some river –

Pariah

You remember walking the streets,
remember the hush, drizzle
spooling from limp branches.
The shade of your father
trudging behind at a distance
in a long dirty mac,
his grey face bunched in a scowl,
as if behind a waterfall.
The street artist, scuffling
to bag up his chalks
as the rain beat on his art,
turning a dribbling face
from the earth to sky, to you,
and how you said something
multicoloured and strange,
how you couldn't help or hurt
him in his spat on dreamland.

How that moment broke
the clouds, ivories tinkled,
how a blue, angelic hustler
sung ragtime waltz for change.
How a crazed African ran out
in a dazzling white thobe
and seemed to dance
across the busy road.
How the horns and sirens
broke like sugar glass
at his heel.