SPIN THE YARN

a poem by Sheila R Lande

An over-ripe fruit, flesh bursting out of skin
bruised peach run over by the biker who only looks ahead,
its remains sinking 
into the concrete that was laid by the man 
whose wife told him
that she wanted a divorce
over their cup of coffee at breakfast,
the beans picked and ground 
by a child who hailed from a land 
that mapmakers never remember to plot;
where survival is a mystery and death but daily routine,
yet he ventures into the fields where scorpions abound
so in the evening, he can drop three coins 
into his mother's palms--
palms that a poet would call calloused, 
but he calls 'filled with love'--
watch her lips break into a smile and 
a flicker surface in the eyes 
that are always lost in sadness,
sadness that drove the man 
a thousand of miles away 
to drown himself in ink,
blue tears running out of eyes 
that have rolled far too up into his own mind,
dribbling down the nose that snorts
lines of poetry, down the lips 
that are stained #f0d32b
because maybe if Van Gogh found happiness 
in yellow, he could too:
it's the colour of the bike his brother 
brought home last night,
smelling 
of ripened fruit and sterile store:
reminds him of his father at sunset—
reminiscence that is
achingly beautiful.
  
       -- can we calI it a story if it's the truth?

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