'An Eagerness for these Ghosts'
pen and coloured pencil on paper
autumn 2009
This season creeps in from woods and unused alleys, a twitten-thing, twittering down the suddenly sloping afternoons. The sea rushes to greet it, an eagerness for these autumnal ghosts.
I would sit in the garden and think on an evening like this if I could. Watch the darkness sweep in over fences, covering the first few discarded leaves.
Dreaming of internal autumns.
I do not have a garden though, and I must content myself with watching the chimney-shadows creep up the buildings across the street. Blinded by walls, the sun sinks somewhere to my right.
The remaining traces of the sun on the houses opposite seems heavy, refined in factories to become as thick and welcome as exhaustion after a long day when sleep finally nears.
Back in Wilbury Crescent, I would often sit in the garden, smoking cigarettes and drinking secret cups of tea, and feel the light fade and the night settle about me. The trains that passed by the end of the garden seemed almost consolatory. Sudden windows of yellowed passengers coming home. Very rarely, a steam train would pass by and the garden would be shrouded in an industrial fog.
There was a tree in the garden two houses down we called the Magpie Tree, because there were always magpies about it. I think it was a poplar, and was never still, seeming to rustle even when there was no breeze. Jittery butterfly wing movements.
I would sit on a rocking chair below the apple trees, happy in the pools of darkness, watching the hedge become shadow, the cracked paving stone fade and become as comprehensible as a map seen from a distance.
There was always the smell of wood smoke in that garden on autumn nights, a ghost of all autumns perhaps.
I would remain outside until full dark, and when I would return inside the interior of the house seemed full to too many angles and dull dismal yellow light.
I miss that garden, and there is no garden here, just thoughts of the sea and a September nostalgia for places I shall never see twilight in again.
