KD6

Beyond Description

In a garden of myself
I’ve become a prayer
beautiful beyond description.

Pressed as a pattern
in the sub-conscious
I’m hiding in there
amusing only myself.

But here
I’ve found others
wanting
to be laid out
like in a book.

Wanting to be un-consumed
by the earth
and not
just waiting
to turn into dust.

When the party is over
and motion is still
I rot
till I flake away
beautiful beyond description.


By Robert Kennedy

Night Air and Jasmine

(after KD 6 by Kate Durrough)

Here’s a new accidental spontaneity
refusing to comply with actual meaning.
There’s concealment of course, hidden inside
something else, giving rise to doubt
and celebration; with this kind of frivolity
you can’t have one without the other.
And expectation’s not to be ignored
it’s at least implied by the woman with the hat
and with that, I give you Venice!
masked in flowers and leaves
unfurling its vortex to confuse bees
and approaching tourists with cameras ―
who isn’t lured by such frivolity? ―
the rest like feral Quakers holding court
beneath a parasol of trees, but you can’t see these.
A man has fallen out of his gondola
with a mighty splash, you can’t see that either
but it happens time and time again.

© Paula McKay