Reverie Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

Summer came today
With sun bright across golden gorse and white arum lilies,
Glistening and glossy in the native Bush,
And flat with shadows amid the grey and beige
And white houses on the hillsides below.

In the morning I had sat
In a kind of ancient reverie
Half sleeping – half non-thinking
While I avoided the tasks
That I had assigned.

And I pondered on how,
Growing old, I had become more like a cat
Looking now for chances
To sun myself and slow the pulse
Of life and just be.

The thing with the cats though
Is that many dreams later
They can bound up and kill
While I am left to track day-dreams
And bring them to bay.

The musing become laziness
I finally set to planting some flax
And to weeding the terraced garden
Below the steps, watched by my favourite cat
Who made her disdain all too clear.

Occasionally I would throw weeds down
To the Bush below or wave a dead stalk
And the little tabby would get the wind up,
Her tail whip-staff steering
A galleon that had sighted pirates.

Tonight no doubt she will raid the Bush
For field mice and skinks
Or the early nestlings of blackbirds
But all that I will have to show
Is soil under my nails and these lines.