Back projected

Cold and close, for all it hid, the fog
and the light it shed brought some focus,
like the haloes round my shadow’s head
as the sun came through.

Around the streetlamps of the town
as I turn for home, rainbows ring the neon till,
before a fairer wind, there comes a muffled dark,
a knowing that there will be, in time,
an ending of whatever dream it was I knew;
was it ever clearer air or yet awakening?

© BH, 1983

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Digging into a folder labelled ‘Fragments’ on my computer, I found this remnant, taken, I think, from a 1983 manuscript. The poem I drew together then was ‘Back Projection’ and these few lines, when I found them again seemed still to have merit.

So here in 2024, with a little revision (but not much) and a rearrangement to lines, they see the light again.