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