Simple by Robert Nisbet

Simple

Imagine this. Brown-panelled surgery.
You’re simply told of what you’ve hoped so long:
You’re clear. Just that. You’re clear, you’re bloody clear.
You hear your heart’s wild shout. Huge days stack up.

You’ll walk into the morning (will you not?)
and every cornice, pavement, starling, cloud,
each doorway, primrose, coffee cup and street,
that man’s inconsequential smile, your heart,
the whole vast, lovely, all-but-shapeless heap,
will seem to say, its breath quite still, You’re clear.
How very, very beautiful is life.

Now we, my friend, my compeer, we’ve not known
that rasping clash with our mortality.
For me, for you, might days still be like that?
Why can’t you, can’t we, every trembling day,
gaze on that drift of surely random cloud,
that coffee cup, the starling’s glossed black,
the stranger’s sudden smile (that most of all),
the whole big, deep shenanigans of hope,
and in the warm heart’s certain core, be glad?

by Robert Nisbet

Editor’s Note: This poem is anything but simple. The blank verse slips into the reader’s mind, deceptively easy, but the true heart of the lines is in the narrator’s questions.