Jim Coleman

The tree had wrapped itself
around a rusty bike in an inextricable embrace
its grip distorting it as time does memories.
Being old, its fungus rotted holes
...

What is it that makes the world go round?
Our planet bears us on its back,
as it hurtles through the night without a sound.
.
...

I hear you sing:

suppressed as if in church.
...

If I could fast rewind my life, the frame
I would stop at would be that distant day
when I first spied the Himalayan
peaks from the cockpit of an old aeroplane
...

I know a place I keep returning to,
even though there's nothing there.

There's nothing there.
...

What have I achieved?
I've made no waves:
the shore remains unchanged
I've wielded no new brooms:
...

You're free one moment, having fun or not,
as the case may be, rehearsing dreams,
playing the lead role in an unfolding plot
written for you by your destiny:
...

After living many years abroad
it's good to come back home to grow old
and make friends who were shaped in that same mould
into which you were, decades ago, poured;
...

Remember, in that pub, when they would not serve me
because of you? Or when, in Vermont,
however hard you tried, you couldn't
catch the bar girl's eye?
...