Rowland Bagnall

Near-Life Experience

So far the year is imprecise,
spelling itself out using a limited vocabulary.

Outside it is greys and browns and dark, rich, spruce-hued greens,
life, or very close to life, the wind whipping in twos and threes,
rain seeking us out.

I test the coffee and the coffee table, which seem
real enough, as does the eucalyptus tree I’ve noticed only
just now after many months.

Acre-hungry fires are licking the outback,
exposing giant sketches on the surface of the earth: an eye, a hand,
a mouth starting to speak.

Everything looks futuristic, as though it hasn’t really happened yet
or like it’s only just pretending to have happened and will
suddenly switch on ‘for real’.

The pure contralto still sings in the organ loft;
the mate is always ready with his lance and his harpoon.

Liz is hunting rabbits in Wisconsin;
Adam is bowing his head during The Burial at Ornans (1849-50),
inhaling luminously painted air;
Becky turns her head in Miró’s studio in Palma;
Stephen, Jane, and Ariel are sleeping now in Montreal.

The grasslands here have all grown back.
The grey waters recede.

I delete myself, returning to a previous save-point.

When I arrive, so light I can barely move – loopholes, static, terrible
slaughters – the situation hastens, veering about, and the wind whips past again
cutting my younger, cleaner, stranger face.

Confirm Humanity

Sitting in a square in
Europe – coffee and tables,
a small child in a
puffer jacket. 

It’s good for a city
to build around water – the coast
and other knife-like edges,
a series of canals and rivers.

I saw a man
preparing gooseberries
in a kitchen
through a ground floor window.

I imagine – in some
detail – his hands holding
the paring knife, his knuckles,
wooden handle, blade.

A couple
cross the square
in sunglasses
of uncertain ironicness.

There are planters
where I’m sitting
but whatever grew inside
them’s died.

I think about a scene from
Train Dreams (2011),
a scene I can’t seem
to forget about.

It knows – I think –
that ghosts are more
a presence than
an absence;

that haunting’s
what we’ve always
wanted and – in many ways –
have always had.

Apparently, Matisse
once went to see
the aging,
arthritic Renoir,

moved to find him
painting with
a brush
tied to his fingers.

Two trees
growing side-by-side
have branches
that are making contact – as if

in friendship, curiosity
– another body, similar but not
my own – something to touch, a thing
that knows me.

Poem with Richard Diebenkorn

Why is it that
this field, for example, fuzzy
and scribbled in, or the cupcake
icing of each
bungalow, reminds
me of a corridor – the kind
that seems
a metaphor for
something (though this often
happens, the mind
moving itself) – the
heat blurring the edges
of the roof tiles and the summer grass,
pine trees generating needles
in their tens of thousands, forming
cones, the sun making
its slow way
out, recorded in
the colour of the tarmac and the
bursting leaves?

Shirtless, maybe, brush
in hand, I summon
Richard
Diebenkorn, measuring
the distance from his rooftop
to the beach,
narrowing his eyes
to try and pick out the horizon, the
day shrugging its shoulders, forcing in
an evening which has
already begun
elsewhere.

I think about
the year to come – imagining it running
through to
August, autumn, Halloween –
until eventually
it’s out of sight, a long uneven desert road,
dissolving up
ahead into a sky
-creating
haze.

Turning back now,
Richard
speaks – There’s more time. Do you
need it? – his
voice bringing the night
air, rushing out to the Pacific, a hum
of electricity
left crackling for many miles.