Jeremy Roberts
Permanently Temporary
For Jay
It seems to me now—
looking back,
how temporary everything
really was.
I watched a flake of concrete
fall off a verdigris-laden wall,
and flutter to the ground.
It was now part of
the ground—no longer
part of the wall.
What is there to fear?
Not being able to hold on?
It is our destiny
to eventually tumble from each apogee,
to slip off the ledge
and
crash
however softly, through the branches
of the very trees
we
grew!
Landing
where
we
must.
It’s okay.
This is merely
how the game is played.
Jeremy Roberts is a Primary school teacher, and father to a teenage musician daughter. He is an MC at Auckland’s ‘Poetry Live’ and regularly appears at spoken word events around the city. He recently read his work in Texas, USA. His work has been published in Side Stream, Live Lines IV, Poetry NZ #44 and will be seen this year in Takahe Magazine and the NZ Listener. Of ‘Permanently Temporary’ Roberts writes: “It was written during a difficult transitional period, and it just came to me—as a fact of life, really.”