COUNTRY HOTEL

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COUNTRY HOTEL

One man with a frown ruining.
his once-young features, one woman
by his side and yet, one hopes,
by herself sometimes,
her body collapsing slowly, partly
because of the ravages of duty,
and partly through simple neglect,
her spirit not-quite-devastated
with weary camaraderie....
What use to ask or wonder
where have they been; what do,
and did, their lives mean
to each and one another.

Now that we should grow morose
and feel a swift frisson
at the sight of such ordinariness,
two people who happened to touch,
one day, for one moment
when something exciting broke
and left them reeling.

I can tell you this
because it happens to many of us,
because I know how random
whim and randomness are,
how opaque emotion conspires
to drive insight out the door.

Why, only the other day
I held two ducks who were
not quite ready to fly.
A friend had run them down
on the river bed, and rather
than killing and eating them,
decided on photographs instead.

I do not know, entirely
what this tells us of ducks,
of what it means, but what I do know is,
that had it been the day before,
or the day after,
things might have been different.

Brian Turner

Love turned into companionship, the randomness of things and decisions, ducks and people, life and death decisions – the stuff of contemporary life; well-captured.