ALL IS PASTEL

I’ve been sitting here for ages, trying to figure out how the new moon finds its bearing; how its poetry has decided to rise in the east and settle down in the west to mark day from night. The page flutters and I shudder, knowing books won’t ever make me a poet, no matter how cleverly I try. I pretend I’ve grasped its accent, but murmuration murmuring, it simply disappears into reticence.

Belatedly I feel I’m plagiarising myself, despite finding a darkness with no cave paintings, and Genesis has nowhere to begin. The hope for Lascaux is vain, if bold. The new moon still hangs in the empty sky, like a story no one cares to tell, and I can’t get round to the other side to discover the meaning behind. It seems I’ve been living in a two-dimensional world: no depth, no history, no solidity. It’s not only that poetry doesn’t arise, it's experience that’s painfully contrived.

I sit and wait. Fearful. In the end all is mere pastel.