There are moments

There are moments

Of disconnection

For all of us.

It can be anywhere

The drifting between worlds

The in-before time.

I should have written

More letters.

Phone calls could be so tedious

Especially with a bad connection

Speaking to my dad

Without his hearing aid

Was unsettling.

Too many people complain

About absence

When they turn a deaf ear

To a compliment.

Nobody is happy

With the little they get

When there is always more

Waiting somewhere

Just around the corner.

In a sky forest

Where the rainmaker

Tends to the needs

Of the old souls

There is a tree

So full of itself

It drains the life out of its neighbours.

No wonder it grows head and shoulders

Above all the rest.

Listening to broken conversations

The tail end of a story

The beginning of a lie

A budding romance

Everybody is a hero,

Nobody dies face down on the dirt.

Regression

Is an interesting theory,

Past lives

Were full of derring-do

Everybody was famous

Julius Caesar, not

The guy who filled the wine

Or a centurion

Toe to toe in a shield wall

Stinking of sweat

And loose bowels.

Nelson was a little bloke

But a giant in past life regression

I’ve come across him several times

Over a cup of coffee

In a busy cafe.

When tall stories

Drift in and out of the background noise,

The smell of toast and bacon

The scream of release

From a table of pensioners

With oxygen tanks.

Wetting their knickers

When they realise

Elvis has just left the building.