Ian C. Smith
In Dock
Gardening, sweat his cure for loneliness, fleeing regret, keeps him fit. Raking fecund beds of leaf litter raises whiskery mosquitoes like ghostly wraiths from their shady seclusion. Passing the long disused sandpit under Japanese lanterns, now ivy-stitched, he pauses where children played while parents celebrated with song, showed off, spilled wine. Old-age was a different chapter then.
Earlier, he curated introspection, willfully selecting piano and cello, Koechlin’s Chansons Bretonnes. Sombre music filled his musty-dusty house, rooms echoing, as usual, of the past’s fleeting joys. The murmur of lost years, prompted his recall of waiting for the punt, pre-aircon days, window-down summer, car parked in line, elbow catching breezy suggestions. He daydreamed about the prospect of journeys not taken, a descent into reverie, gulls gliding, the punt’s creaking.
Everything flared into visibility, busy mainland edging closer, water shimmering, silvery. Those gulls’ eyes accused like love’s betrayal etched in moments of absolute clarity. Longing, despair, flooded his lungs, prologue of memory, chains grinding, the punt straining to meet the dock, to be winched into its pre-ordained position, a sound like a dying beast’s rattle of pain.
Archaeologists discovering tesserae threnody's witness
About the Author
Ian C Smith’s work has been published in Amsterdam Quarterly, Antipodes, BBC Radio 4 Sounds, cordite, The Dalhousie Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Stony Thursday Book, and Two-Thirds North. His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy. He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria and on Flinders Island.