tim's Bits and Pieces - 4. Concrete and Fantasy

I long for the natural world, sitting on my porch at daybreak, coffee in hand, notebook and sharp pencil ready. Instead, I am herded onto buses, packed with others like me. I am going to work with hundreds of others, inside an artificial environment. I look out windows of sealed glass, and watch clouds blown across the sky by winds I cannot feel.

Air is pumped in
lungs do not care
body is fueled
but the soul wants
rain on my face

With longing I gaze at pictures of mountains and rivers. The photographer had walked, lives there, and can be there as and when he desires. Here I must make do with parks, mournful postage stamps of grass and two trees.

Somewhere fresh, somewhere real, somewhere lit by the sun

A place where mountains prop up the sky, and tumbling rivers rage

Where the wind flattens summer grasses and electric-green grasshoppers jump

And I can find protection tucked against the rough living bark of a tall tree

Longing for fresh air saddens me, and I feel let down and grasping for what I will never have

On Sunday it is quiet when I dismount the bus. This is my reality. Orange construction barrels block the way. The old sidewalks are now compromised as massive wooden hydro poles have been planted in their centres. Why? We have not been told, but it is, I feel, just the beginning. Soon more land will be ripped up and re-paved. I tire of the noise; there is no peace, no quiet anywhere in my world.

Machines tear up the earth and bury cement pipes
causing desks to shake and rattle
Fellow workers talk and laugh, while they drink coffee
Bosses look at stats, percentages, walk like guards asking
'Are we caught up yet?'
I am only a two-legged fancy rat
Running quickly nowhere but the to the end, and regret
Living graceless lives, where dinner is what we speak of most

This Sunday feels no different. I grumble because I must walk on the road since they have dug up my usual path down the side of the huge warehouse of an office, where I work. I trudge onward to do my duty. Yet … something is different today, within me. Spring has come to my concrete world; strips of grass are green, little trees struggle on, between the road and a building. That is where I see it, in the branch of a small nursery grown tree; it's tag still on. Someone, with imagination, with optimism, with a lightness of being, has picked you up and sat you there. Left you clinging to your branch, to bring a smile to my soul.

You are a creature of fantasy, small and winged
Left on a branch, looking outward, ready to fly
—a perfect tiny horse, with wings—
I stop and smile, asking who and why?
Answers matter not; all that does is you are there
There. When you could be in a pocket, on a desk
kicked into the road
but it was hope, inner joy, whimsy and love that raised you
and you become my obsession, my castle-in-the-air.

To think of you is to smile
to cherish
to believe.

I think about the coming Sunday, and I wonder if you will still be there?

_____

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