How to build a shelf in yourself
1.
Just keep a stillness in you
Like the bubble of a spirit level
When it’s found its straightness
and the line can be drawn
From one corner of your being to the other
The shelf built
For you to place your life upon.
It must be straight, this shelf
Or else your life will just slide off with a slow crash
You’ll have to pick it up again, amazed , once more
That it is always flowers that survive
such a crash upon the floor.
2.
You pick them up, these flowers
And notice that their
very stillness seems to dance
This is the stillness that you want
Dancing like a memory
Playing hide and seek
In the cupboard of your mind (Hoping you’ll find
it but not yet
And so it holds its breath
Keeps still…)
3.
You find it!
And it’s a memory of childhood – those shelves you had
That sagged like a smile
under the weight of so much happiness
So many books
They all collapsed of course
But it was laughter spilling out across the floor
You picked a book up with a picture on the front of a high hill that didn’t move
And yet your eyes rolled down it to a sea that was so deep
full of reflected sky
So high
You were dizzy with it, laughing
4.
This is the stillness that you want
That contains laughter
You’re sad the dog has smashed
Dad won it for you on the rifles at the fair
There were no end of melancholy prizes at this place
Plaster of Paris ornaments
or goldfish in the bags
that always wobbled
and were never still
You’re wondering even now
Is it true the hooplas didn’t fit those plinths?
That no-one ever won a diamond watch?
Oh never mind you loved those dogs
And now this one’s dissolving in the carpet
5.
You clear away, sweep up the mess
It takes all day
Tomorrow you must build your shelf again
Put on it all the things that have survived
The flowers with their
dancing stillness
and an invite which says RSVP
It is not too late to reply.