flash lad

you have some strange thoughts when you've been on your own in a 400-year-old cottage for days and you're dead drunk, missing the woman you love. still, don't we all have flashes of other eras where we feel we might have been more at home?



a sudden heavy downpour
from the clouds darkening the evening
pounds on the overgrown ivy,
the garden bench, the pavement.
i'm writing, listening to flash lad
an old folk tune for accordion
in the lookout, under old oak beams.
i glance up, wondering what's the noise,
and for one moment it's 1676
when flash lad and this house were new.
then i come back: wars, diseases
and god's death falling into place.
i'm somewhat disappointed. i'm
not sure which century was mine.
i still hear a coach and horses bumping
over the wheel ruts in the road.
imagine a space inside my jacket
where a pistol ought to be.