School Reunion 1 Poem by Michael Maxwell Steer

The Guest Book is offered with a biro-securing thumb.
‘50 years - unbelievable! ' one comments.
‘No,51 actually! ! ! ' writes another.
I sign my name, but add no comment. What glib remark

would capture the depth of my anguish - looking back down
the barrel of time to the point where the bullet first entered my heart?
Here, where I was first wounded, I must come for healing.50
years it has taken. ‘No,51 actually! ! ! '

Each psychic wound is caused by a unique configuration
of personalities: healing the damaged tissue
demands we reconnect with the moment of impact
and, like a film reversed, un-live it throu forgiveness.

Memories I cannot share now are the thoughts
I could not speak then - a shamanic irruption of dreams, so frightening
I was put to sleep in the sick room. Who could interpret for me?
Who in that city of Christians saw to the roots of wisdom?

With hindsight I can see is the gift: a thousand fractured
fractals winking like wicked shards of glass: my lifelong
task, collecting them to reassemble into
a dazzling spire, unique in imagery.

How many dreary years when death seemed preferable
to this finger-lacerating pointlessness?
One word of wisdom in my childhood would have
been a drop of water on a hell-bent tongue.

I've earnt my right to a hearing, not because my thoughts
are at all popular - there never is applause for
voices from the wilderness - but because
these shards of glass I work with transfix or cut the heart.

Discovering how they fit together so that they
enchant or penetrate, matching my intention
to desired result,has involved many accidents.
My hands bear the scars, but so do the hearts of others.

What my childhood taught me 50 years ago,
‘No,51 actually! ! ! ' - was how to hide my
heart, how to make it invisible to bullies
and ignoramuses alike. But sometimes

I also made it invisible to those I loved.
Some with resolution or supernatural skill
saw throu this camouflage - but it took decades
before I could contemplate friendships with other men.

With experiences in childhood, when we come
to decode them later, it's like a sound heard on
the point of sleep: where what is close and quiet can be
mistaken for something far away and threatening.

Memories of childhood are like some tiny object
held before a light - the closer to, the greater
is their power to mask the light, and conjure up
phantasmagoric shapes whose potency persists.

And so it's here we must return for healing,
to the source of suffering - to re-conjure
that accidental curse and draw the poisoned tooth
from the fiery mouth of our greatest fears.

Fear and attraction - twin poles of our existence.
To know that both arise within, like red and white
springs upwelling yards apart, is to have come
to our true centre. ‘50 years - unbelievable! '


25-31/7/05