What is it doing on the clean carpet, <br />that bit of pink something? <br /> <br />Not a curse upon the house-proud <br />nor a criticising comment on the housekeeper, <br />or retribution for the gap under the front door, <br />or – it it’s blown in from the garden – <br />a hint of early autumn threatening poetic sadness <br />or a reminder of the fragile evanescence of all things <br /> <br />it is a whisper from God <br />which has eluded the debris whirling between stars, <br />the heat of the sun, its solar dust, <br />the icy-cold of atmospheres, <br />airless space of ether, <br />antennae of early-warning systems, <br />hover of spy-planes, <br />click and silent breath of listening devices, <br />tick tick tick of incriminating tapes recording, <br />unforgiving eye of spy cameras, <br />the chatter of minds forever elsewhere, <br /> <br />it is a petal shed from the geranium outside the door, <br />of the most delicate, almost transparent <br />pink no rose no shell no just itself <br />of a fine fine substance which no man can yet make <br />on its long, long pilgrimage <br />from beyond the whole vast cosmos of <br />innumerable solar systems, beyond where <br />space bends upon itself in homage <br />where the mind of God dwells <br /> <br />to find itself again in my suddenly open heart <br />as if it had never travelled from or to, <br />this whisper of pinky-rosy-shell-like stuff <br />on the carpet by the warm bare foot.<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/that-bit-of-pinky-stuff-on-the-carpet/
