Too Much
Damp in the spare bedroom, the estate agent’s ‘nursery’,
is spreading; cold, almost wet, to the touch. How long
is anyone’s guess. Our guess is three weeks. It’s fussed up
the paint, the wall speaks through cracked lips, whispers
from the playground to that found realm of shivers.
The shower leaks from the shower head, drips on off.
Time is spent calculating the cost. Something is always
worth it; worth fixing or throwing away, worth not
thinking about now. Time is the motive behind motivation.
You can lose it temporarily. So much is our choosing:
transport links, the right diversity of cuisine, the tone
of the walls. I say our, yours or mine. Compromise
is gravity. The obsolete fireplace has been retained
for the mantelpiece; it displays itself and the painting
above, a still life at the point of abstraction. The future
is not our children’s future, we’re careful with our clichés.
Consequence waits in things, the precursor to events,
felt in a bike’s wobble, a leaflet through the door. Boredom,
a symptom of childhood, like flu, can be experienced
but not remembered. We can only not answer the phone
so many times. New vocabularies form new concerns.
Conversation is an equality action plan, a concession
to the vogue of thrift, spectrum-conscious, sustainable.
Failure is meaning. Our not-wanting-kids is emotional
miscarriage, a shibboleth. I could say your, but I don’t
need to. We move on. Give birthday cards a week
obscuring the classics, before James Merrill’s grin
returns our gaze. We celebrate an almost organic meal
with grace. Atheistically solemn, I read that sonnet again.
Samuel Daniel: I say no more, I feare I said too much.