Ian C. Smith: ‘Word Whisperer’

Word Whisperer

Burgeoning morning on his longed-for summer holiday, that universal hope birdsong beginning, a susurrus of surf, no phone, computer, or babble of messages; tantalising words have whispered since 3 a.m. Revolving a biro, he writes in the third person, his past self someone else, lips moving, crosses out inadequacies, the caravan a cocoon, smell familiar, apt words avoiding capture. Any prompt; reading foxed anthologies, a cello’s sombre notes, reverberations from the vanished back streets of youth, death’s ubiquity, the luminosity of sculptured angels, shreds of understanding, giants, ghosts, that endless depository of remembrance childhood, a quivering wren ventured inside bewildered by books, a dolphin pod sighted from a deserted beach, newspaper spreadeagled on a fence, the remains of lost friendship sifted gazing through glass stained by rain, might trigger a cadence junkie listening to his heart’s murmur, his, a love story, however strange, daydreaming of lyrics, witnessed by smiles pinned to a wall, drawings, reminders of dark menageries of the past, crumpled drafts fallen flowers, blanched, like so many aspirations. A subscriber to artful magazines, he would burn on high beam but no sooner do words draw near the further distant they seem.  

Ian C. Smith