Emulsion

I.

There’s a lightpoint behind each stark bridge of despair

As though  a blinkered sun, unmoving, unmoved, lives there.
Steel girders thrown into sharp silhouettes show up
Transmissions of wave-like movements that heave and stop.
Cautious caterpillar trails of faint hopes and crippling fears
Etching their own slow ways in metal over the years.
The sharp recoil of flesh, the sudden dives and swoops
Of organs swept off their feet or left out of the loops.

There’s a darkpoint beyond every  bridge wherever I turn

And every bridge leads up to the places of no return
Unnerving that there are no clashes, no terrible conflicts
Between the lightpoints and the dark ones that seem to exist
Emulsified into each other at the ends of bridges.   Love and despair. 
Immiscible dark. Mixed up so that I can’t quite see the layers.

II.

Things that I didn’t know existed, and without that knowledge

One step after another led to the mouth of the bridge

And even then I didn’t know, I didn’t realise

All dark and light, all love and despair emulsifies

Drip into each other on bridges, over rifts, everywhere

Even when we don’t know that we love, or think we don’t despair.

The loves I didn’t know I had, didn’t know I’d loved, even then

They oozed into the dark and despair and a blinkered sun.

So here I was, and there was the bridge, and there the ooze

The slow furry creep along the slats, those diffuse

Trails that petered out when the dark dripped into the sun

And also when the lightpoints jiggled the emulsion

The seep of love into my days, the creep of despair

The drip of light into the dark.  Mixed-up immiscible pairs.


III.

A darkpoint slowly made dilute with the steady drip

Of an amorphous light and an amorphous love and friendship

The bridges built with girders of grace and then wrecked

To make way for some other far less lofty project

Each lightpoint dribbles inevitably into darkness

And yet the light and dark are themselves, not a bit less.

Nudging each other at the ends of bridges, over great rifts

Playfully serene, without any significant conflicts.

Without my knowing, without my being remotely aware

All my loving has come to dilute every despair

Each time I’ve loved, a little of my self has slowly bled

From me  into the being or thing I’ve loved instead.

And I am still me, and they are still they, no more no less

Immiscible all, but emulsified. Love  and despair and us.