My travelling companion.
Will and I.
My unseen companion is a tireless lover of life, when I am haunted by self pity,
My decision maker despite my earnest dispute,
Clear leader, that I must stumble behind.
I stop, awed at his easy ability discerning the path.
Author to my agonised actor, he says suddenly,
"Here. Here is where you tread next. Just here."
"But, of course."
"And here is what you must say."
Ungraciously, I take my part, and still fail to see
That it comes from beyond that event horizon,
Towards which I daily dismiss all the stuff of my life, the good and the bad,
And from whence is returned, new-formed, its next instalment.
He, my dark heart, unfathomable
And I, self-styled, actor,
We, step precisely and with perfect timing,
Through the fleeting, endless entrance to our life.
On dark days, though, he leaves me stranded.
Beached and bereft on my island bed, I scour the concealing surface.
Briefly I may glimpse that inchoate leviathan of ancient fears and nameless tatters
Billowing beneath, reminding me that I have no idea of his reach or parts.
What cold glint is in his little eye?
Where my trusty author now?
Does he still thrill to the sleek, living line of narrative,
Or, rather, the myriad senseless terminations of chaos?
And there we are. It is his will be done,
Decided by things I have no conception of, but,
But, if we are to move deftly across the world’s stage
Will needs to see my rehearsals, feel my agonising, to sweeten his script.
