Places He Has Slept
Ian C. Smith

In an abandoned car, curled foetal
in his own car, agony of remorse
the top row of an empty grandstand,
imagined cheers as he waited for the light
unknowing in tents pitched in pitch darkness,
once next to a busy highway,
another time in a garbage dump
& near Viking graves, scarred warriors at rest
also in a formal graveyard, car broken down.
On wool bales, stench of warehouse lanolin
alone & bruised in a bare, freezing cell
on the bare floor of a derelict house
with a runaway friend escaping from hell
in antiseptic hospitals; a psych ward
on concrete in a tropical airport
in jets badly; on rolling ferries,
anguished seabirds rocking him to sleep
on a wide waterbed wobbling
in a mean bunk of an ex-troopship
in an American bedroom all in black
under a beach hut cuddling his dog
through philosophy lectures, waking guilty
in caravans redolent of other lives.
And now, in the arms of this woman,
whisper of her breath under a dreamcatcher.
These dreams are stories worth catching.