Reflector on the Post

North Oaks, 25 December 2005

A few clicks ahead, opposite the reflector on the post

Lies a shanty-town junk shop that’s never been closed

And its owners, oddly, never seen or heard

Under the surveillance of exotic game animals

And the offbeat chromosomes of aberrant kinfolk

We utter mah-mah as our first coherent noun

We pose in providence for anonymous portraits

Faded and feckless toward terminal reconciliation

With the earliest things we’ll no longer remember

A moth-eaten buffalo mount is the only taxidermy

That tidies our faces into distinguishing features

With glass eyes revealing past lives of passers by

As characters converge at the margins of the stage

Mouthing ebullient but voiceless conversation

We begin to question what’s really been said