Blank Canvas

[Hawkman]

Atop coastal cliffs one sees them;
well-wrapped passengers, in pairs,
weathering the winter
sitting in parked cars,
gazing through windscreens
fogged by tea-steam.

They are, ‘admiring the view,’
that vast expanse of grey,
one topped by another.
‘Isn’t it nice,’ they say.

You can see them in the summer too,
but then the windows are wound down
and clothing’s shed,
save for shorts and tee-shirts.
In summer, if they’re lucky,
they may see a lot of blue,
but likely it’ll still be grey
although, perhaps, a paler shade.

What, exactly, is it that has caught the eye?
The slightly denser patch betraying
the presence of a frigate in the mist,
or the masted slivers of white fibreglass
that flail tricorn sails at the sky?
Perhaps it is the curved inversion of a smile,
that fuzzy boundary of the rounded earth
which demarcates the limits of all sight.

There is no drama here, no view.
Nothing to engage or occupy the mind.

It is the emptiness they so admire,
a blank screen for projections
in a moment of stillness,
somewhere for childhood memories
to flicker briefly in a mind
more usually preoccupied
with dealing with sciatica
or an irritable bowel.

[cafolini]

From too much shooting from the hip.

[Hawkman]

Who knows the secrets of the Black Magic box?

[Haunted]

The opening immediately grabs me with the amazing detail of "windscreens / fogged by tea-steam". The best is yet to come, with "the curved inversion of a smile". I've never read the horizon described this way, it's so refreshing and different. The whole poem is so well constructed, the attempt at humor at closing is overkill, methinks.

[Hawkman]

Hi Haunted, and thanks for reading and for your positives comments. Interesting that you consider the closing lines as an Attempt at humour. I didn't intend any levity in them at all. There is something wrong with the stanza though. I think I need to cut "I think" from the first line of the stanza. Glad you liked the tea steam and the horizon :)

Live and be well - H

[Delta40]

I so look forward to this scenery in two weeks time....

[osho]

Atop coastal cliffs one sees them;
well-wrapped passengers, in pairs,
weathering the winter
sitting in parked cars,
gazing through windscreens
fogged by tea-steam.

They are, ‘admiring the view,’
that vast expanse of grey,
one topped by another.
‘Isn’t it nice,’ they say.

You can see them in the summer too,
but then the windows are wound down
and clothing’s shed,
save for shorts and tee-shirts.
In summer, if they’re lucky,
they may see a lot of blue,
but likely it’ll still be grey
although, perhaps, a paler shade.

What, exactly, is it that has caught the eye?
The slightly denser patch betraying
the presence of a frigate in the mist,
or the masted slivers of white fibreglass
that flail tricorn sails at the sky?
Perhaps it is the curved inversion of a smile,
that fuzzy boundary of the rounded earth
which demarcates the limits of all sight.

There is no drama here, no view.
Nothing to engage or occupy the mind.

I think it is the emptiness they so admire,
a blank screen for projections,
a moment of stillness,
somewhere for childhood memories
to flicker briefly in a mind
more usually preoccupied
with dealing with sciatica
or an irritable bowel.

Things fizzle out and in a while all we remain left with is blankness, something of a canvas. The canvas is a mind and anything painted thereon becomes the temporal theme. Scenes change when flashes paste there of something we have don in our childhood or in adulthood or now and nothing reserves enough space since there is little space in our psychic terrain.