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JAMES CHARLTON

---

The Man Who Gropeth Forever

 

At 5 a.m. Sunday he knocks on her door,

doesn't wish to remember the night,

but tells her the past tastes so bad

 

he's got no appetite for the future.

She gives him a hug and sits him down -

then realizes he's wondering whether she's

 

also wondering about a non-committal

caress of a deeper kind,

or shallower,

 

depending how you look at it.

She favours unconditional acceptance

as from a text-book

 

yet by instinct adumbrates

the loves of his life who've walked out,

leaving him 'amazed' but no wiser.

 

On one level she wants to talk

about love being a decision to commit...

but she doesn't wish to appear

 

puritanical, especially since her body

seems at variance with rightousness

and puritans are people who fear,

 

as someone put it, that someone somewhere

must be having a good time. On another level

she wants to get rid of him,

 

but he leaves anyway,

longing to be told that everything is double

that evil can be good, and good evil.

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James Charlton lives at Tinderbox in Tasmania. Widely published, his first poems appeared in Island.