Nostalgia For Paradise Poem by Julia Robinson

I

“Sixty two”
I marvel at my friend
as we wrap hands around coffee mugs
and light up forbidden cigarettes
in cowboy imitations
of freedom and campfires;
our minds forming
smoke dances together
as we venture to the numinous
in joyous tandem flights
sharing so deeply of ourselves
that invisible bridges
recreate us from within.

Happily exhausted
reason kicks in,
and we belly laugh
with the abandonment of
drunken pressure release:
for these brand new truths
we thought we’d unearthed
way back from antiquity,
are now simply sand in our hands;
so instead we talk about
what to have for lunch.


II

“…as old as my mother”
I often say, with tenderness surprising.

I spoke to my mum about her recently
“…but” she says perplexed “I’m sixty five…”
It dawns on me,
Like sun springing out
way too fast from a burning toaster,
that I have not added on the years;

on the outside I nod, a coy smile
as if it were just another silly mistake,
but within my cells scream
Kill that clock! It lies, it lies!
They are as sprightly as ever!
Someone! Something!
Pull them off that conveyor belt
dragging them towards the velvet curtain
which will heave yet another sigh
leaving only a gap that echoes their name.

But as I look down at my own
more knobbly knuckles
clenched around the tea cup
I know too well who it is
that is really lying.