Chiaroscuro
Five o'clock. The bright interiors
of freight forwarders' warehouses
framed in the dusk like a Rembrandt nativity
on an old postage stamp. No camels.
No baby. Planes overhead. Men with forklifts,
ordinarily wise, load cargoes
for distant lands. A single soft flake
lands on my windscreen.
The evening's first star
grows brighter in the sky.
*****
Just after winter solstice seems an appropriate time to post this poem, which is a winter poem, and could also be a Christmas poem, except of course that here in the southern hemisphere Christmas comes in mid-summer.
I used to work near the airport, and in winter it was getting dark when I left the office. A sudden glimpse of a lit warehouse, which somehow reminded me of the painting on the postage stamp shown above, inspired this poem.
It was first published in the Christchurch Press daily newspaper, and later appeared in Flap: the Chookbook 2.
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2 comments:
Love the feel of this poem - the distance and travel through both time and space that is evoked on nearly every line.
This is beautiful. It feels defiantly lonesome. I can feel the cold outside, and the dim colors with some golden lights like Rembrandt's nativity.
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