First Moleskine

Impossible to tell now, what was choice,

action, re-reaction. The colours mix:

your thinking, my own. Obedience squeezed

from dried-up bottle holes of school acrylics.

Onto words then, wondering if real moles

blackened this book, each page feeling wasted

to thoughts in inattentive scribble hand.

Got that from your father, she insisted.

The cure for shyness was lemon collars

beneath velvet blazers, and those red shoes

we saw in films sometimes but couldn’t buy

then. You don’t want weird trainers, do you?

Even now as an ally, unable

to ally myself. Once some flags are raised

they can’t be hidden when the wind’s rage falls.

So wear my mind in solid t-shirt greys,

a way to quiet the spectrum of strange

manners that may put history in place,

puzzle its bits until it no longer

looks like the picture on the box. Just plays

itself. Lines in paint and felt tip, or spelled,

or adjectives where colour doesn’t fit.

Bound with a thick enough elastic strap

there’s room in the notebook for all of it.