Background Conversation

I wish I’d learned to speak wave growing up.
And tree.
Maybe rain and creaky floorboard too.

I always felt there was stuff going on I wasn’t
privy to.
Something they were keeping from me.

Like meaning of life stuff, stuff that loses all
substance
when you try to express it in words.

I’m pretty sure the cats had a good idea what
was what.
You just had to look at them to know.

They were in the know. I knew it. I just did.
Little shits.
Not as deadpan as they like to think.

---

Always

…contraction of Old English phrase ealne weg, literally “all the way.”

There was never time for him
but he was always there for her
like a good bottle of wine,
one you keep for a
special occasion that never comes.

But not a really good bottle
one that might actually
be drinkable on the day.
Might being the key word, of course,
because uncorking can be…

Let’s just go with ‘revelatory.’

---

Essence

The absence of a mountain
does not presuppose
the presence of a hole.

The absence of a hole
on the other hand, is…
thought-provoking.

Jim Murdoch is a Scottish writer living in Cumbernauld. He’s been writing for over fifty years and his list of rejections is voluminous but he keeps at it. He’s written most things over the years–novels, stories, songs, even plays–but he thinks of himself primarily as a poet and is currently producing poems at an unprecedented pace. There are worse things to be in your sixties.