Ruano’s Matter

At the wall, 
Ruano found peace.
                Ruano found peace in the way lines met
and intersected: 
              bricks
           and pallets
    the darkness after matter...

         and that water pipe fending off the sky.
                            "Shelter is a feeling,"  Ruano knew,
              and felt himself hugged
                by the wet smell
                         and the shuffing of somebody’s plastic bunting
                     and the low light 
                      and even the colour of the fox-gecko
                                   painted on the wall.
        
     To his left the fence was like a matrix
             listing layers of green,
         and the road sign buried
its face in a tree.

"Going nowhere" thought Ruano
        putting down his load,
                   watching leaves tickle
              the bucket's edges
           moved by the same warthog breeze 
         that snuffled his hair
                    and iced his bones.

       "Autumn", thought Ruano.
                         The sky would paint its lines more fiercely soon;
               it was time to find a new place.
This would do
                here between the pallet and the wall

A new place
        warm and sheltered:  his own compost.

      Spring and the worms would know him,
              the darkness after matter.



  
          

Written for Visual Verse Anthology May Issue