Thursday November 05, 2009
Death at the Supermarket
I work off images a lot & I saw this photo over on flickr a while ago, by one of my favourite photographers over there ‘Dumpster Diver‘. Her photostream is totally worth a look if you have a moment. Anyway, I love this photo. I can’t stop looking at it. It kind of sums up death, to me. It’s not some abstract, ephemeral, distant thing - it’s here, present, all around us, all the time. It isn’t morbid to know that. It’s sustaining. Keeps a person appreciative and awake. I wrote a poem from the image. I can’t imagine any NZ Lit.journal would ever publish it, so I’m just going to post it here:
DEATH AT THE SUPERMARKET
You have come to me
down phone wires, once
into my email in-box.
You’re sneaky: creeper,
reaper, great white light.
Last time you ran off
with someone I love,
I swore I’d plant a tree
but I never did. The living
are traitors.
With our hot hearts and wet veins.
We eat flesh, secrete bile. We
keep moving. We move on.
Leave the holes where people
once were. We fill them as teeth are filled:
with pain, money, an amalgam.
Still, I can go for weeks without
thinking of you, but then on Tuesday
choosing oranges in the vegetable aisle,
I looked up and there you were. If you were
a talker you might have said “Boo!”
You like to turn up
when I’m otherwise
distracted, keeps
my nerves tight, keeps
our relationship
alive.