A Slight Engagement

 

©  Steve King

All rights reserved

I was passing easy,

close, but no cigar.

‘Paté or champagne?’

competed briefly in the mind.

Then I reached with both empty hands.

The music was distractive:

there was no rhythm in the to and fro.

And all the while the host debased himself

to fawn before the preening A-list show.

It was all chatter and smiles

shaped by the slyest of surmise.

I thought that I could read all in her eyes

while she did surely look through me,

perhaps to gauge some other mingling prize.

Even so, I sighed to speak and listen:

‘So pleased…’

‘What…?’

‘How…?’

‘Really…?’

‘I never knew…’

‘Were you there too?’

There is a kind of solace

even to indifference,

an easy sequestration of the self

to guard against the rush of ill-forming desire,

weaponry to shore each unsettled need;

a sweet cache of certainty

of how one does surely surpass

those least of expectations;

a bulwark set to fend the sting

of all irrelevant unsought truths.

(‘True to whom?’ it asks.)

The bulwark firms with each slight engagement,

with each exercise of that secret certainty;

a welcome defense to dark incursions

of indifference and disregard;

against each mindless courtesy,

those pure rote reveries.

‘Champagne or satay?’

Another question set to stave

grim litanies and wearying regard…

Thus fortified against

all new clichés,

I look to find another set of eyes.

And move again

attracted still to bright things,

relentless, as a crow to copper;

just as a sundown flower

might briefly nod

upon the brilliance

of a coming moon.