Foreknowledge

My mind drifts to arcane words, then I read,
turn pages, find them waiting for me there.
Are these eerie messages I should heed?
Chance?  A higher power, malignant, fair?
Loose thoughts alight on out of contact friends,
presaging their emails in my Inbox
banjaxing me, more disturbing godsends
nearing my final act, hands circling clocks.
In these times of surveillance, a feeling
of being monitored persists, a weight,
also, mumbo-jumbo’s cant, this reeling
from sense for one dubious about fate,
yet I like the image of shadows cast
by guardian angels’ wings.  Safe at last?
                    **************

                                                  

Their Names

Daydreaming of youthful trove’s cloth of gold,
I can’t recall the name of an old flame,
names’ past mode gentle, today’s, blazoned, bold.
I see her, hear her voice, this long-gone dame.
Stab in the dark searching keeps us apart.
Stymied, my tired brain reaches impasses.
I tick off the alphabet, letter smart,
cease rummaging, revisit schools, classes.
Alma, Beatrice, Cassandra, Diane,
Elvie, Florence, Gwenda, from days sublime,
Helen, Irene, Judith, her golden tan.
Katie, Lorraine, Meredith, down through time,
names’ threnody, faded array of choice.
I think that haunting flashback dame was Joyce.

Biog:  Ian C Smith’s work has been published in Antipodes, BBC Radio 4 Sounds,The Dalhousie Review, Griffith Review, San Pedro River Review , Southword, The Stony Thursday Book, & Two Thirds North.  His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide).  He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island.