Writers take inspiration from anywhere-and in the case of the 33rd poem from a “A Light Goes On” -anywhere is the inside of my wardrobe and the paraphrasing of a slogan on a t-shirt.
While the t-shirt provided the title, the opening line –
“I’m all time’s three ghosts”
-is straight from Dickens’ seminal “A Christmas Carol”.
I had just watched a dramatisation of his life as he tried to create his festive opus, and I was struck by the visitation of three ghosts at Christmas, including one that was “present” ! and how it oddly mirrored an end of life version of the Nativity. (…….Depending on what text you read-the end of life gifts that were presented to the newly born infant Jesus were a little odd-no?? ……prophecy??)
Thus the second line-
“And all wise three kings”.
This then set me on the road of imagining immortality as a permanent soul and how lonely and difficult that journey might be or how it might flash past in an instant and spurned opportunities are instantly regretted-
“Have not learned a thing”.
The idea of “present” and a play on it’s dual meaning in the temporal sense and the gifting sense, returns later in the work and is a handy rejoinder to and reminder of the three kings/wise men we encountered in the second line.
“I carry great gifts”
The ghost(s) also soon return-
“You can see right through me
We don’t even exist”.
There is both a sense of regret in the superficiality of earthly life coupled with a nagging almost faithless doubt in those two lines and they provide the horizon for perhaps the most honest, unvarnished lines of the poems-
“I never got where I’m going
I never made it back home”
A liminal, limited traveller in constant motion, both never fully leaving or never fully arriving –
“On my timeless journeys”
-Whilst rejecting the concept of time itself outlined in the first and ninth lines.
Then the last line brings us to the title and we swaddle the nascent poem in a Zara t-shirt:-
“Where you wander alone”.
Algo.
P.S. The backdrop for today’s piece is a charcoal work from my partner. She will be mortified that I have said that. It’s from a photo of me staring out at the Atlantic from Ireland’s western most point. She has turned me into a swirling cyclonic shadow of darkness on a fore shore , which is all the more appealing! and she rightly suggested it for this piece on Behind The Lines.
P.P.S.-Speaking of going on journeys,My second collection, Unreconciled Doors, is the subject of Season 2 of the Algo Poetry-Behind the Lines podcast-follow it on your favourite podcast provider to listen along. If you subscribe you are essentially getting my first two collections (including the first,which is BE.aGaIN) and a gown and mask in the delivery room of where the poems were born!!. Season 3 a matter of weeks away so get up to speed now!.
Algo Poetry-Behind the Lines 