Title: Narcotic

Author: Tom Weston

In: Sport 41: 2013

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2014, Wellington

Part of: Sport

Keywords: Verse Literature

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Sport 41: 2013

Tom Weston — Narcotic

page 184

Tom Weston

Narcotic

The memory of a bridge spanning a wide river, white
stone blocks stacked

into a geometry of recollection.
The warmth and ease of walking in the air above a wide

and, it must be said, dirty river and the care
with which it has been aligned between the banks.

A disease for which, the neighbours say, I self-medicate,
as always the eternal optimist.

I am brought to this by the scent of daffodils in spring,
that dirty hint of musk, more intense even

as each collapses, folding in and darkening.
That scent outruns its form: yes, then I know the stench

of reluctance, a lingering announcement on the hall
table, stalking me

as I take my course across this ghostly bridge, stalking
the other self I saw earlier.

*
page 185
The memory, too, of a café brightly lit like
a doctor’s surgery. Three heads bowed at separate tables,

the murmuring evening put beyond each of them
who has ordered

by pointing at numbered wall-cards, wanting
to step out from that god awful cornucopia of a life

even if only for a moment.
And clematis slumped on a railing, after-rain, with the sky

intensely blue to match the immense green that’s everywhere.
This settles deep

in the lungs as if the earth were being formed there, as if creation
were giving itself a shot at perfection.

It’s about the angular, a pure art of the eternally awkward,
bowed heads again.

As these announcements cut across the years,
call me in from my memories and their heady perfume.

*

I am ready to make a clean break. Yes, really.
That’s what I will say when they put the truth serum in.