Peter Richards

Attention

for Arthur Miller

When I turn over stones I see the world
of a disclosed and fetid underground
— a rude reality — another kind
of living room. Decay and damp, the wild
that calls to those that live there in the mould
unites them creeping, cold and pallid, lends
the wet and ghostly sheen of something spawned
and not yet quickened, like a life withheld.

But they do live. Attention must be paid
to life. Our own criteria of air
and light are only felt by stirring motion
of more solid things or shown inside
a frame of shadow, or the dark fear
in guts and marrowbones. Turn over stones.

Companion Piece: PDSNRA

Tentative Deoxyribonucleic acid spirals, destined to form the basis of Peter Stewart Richards, once extricated themselves from a primeval slime. They have striven to retain the discrete identity thus established.

Opinions draw fire. An open mind is like an open sewer and every bit as acceptable in society.

Cleverly passing off autobiography as fiction has lasting survival value, although it must be said that survival value that doesn’t last is another thing entirely.

Why chimpanzees ever decided to leave the fruity forest environment to which they were peculiarly suited and wander out over savannas and seas is not immediately obvious.

Along with changes in the external environment, maybe, things like a sense of humour and/or mild mental imbalance come to mind.

One is always nearer by not keeping still.