{"id":1007,"date":"2017-03-31T14:07:21","date_gmt":"2017-03-31T14:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/wordpress_marcus\/?p=1007"},"modified":"2024-08-19T15:43:37","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T15:43:37","slug":"poem-of-the-month-april-2017-girl-on-a-tram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/?p=1007","title":{"rendered":"Poem of the Month, April 2017: Girl on a Tram"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>GIRL ON A TRAM<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Old age encounters girlhood<br \/>\n<\/em><em>on a tram from Benidorm.<br \/>\n<\/em><em>Reflections on the norm.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Our tram is tracing<br \/>\nher dry bushy track<br \/>\nthrough the coastal countryside.<\/p>\n<p>The girl on the tram<br \/>\nwas fourteen, I&#8217;d say.<br \/>\nHer dark eyes gazed into mine.<em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Wilderness of pale brown<br \/>\nrock and wild flowers<br \/>\nsloping down to the sea.<\/p>\n<p>I doubt whether I&#8217;ll ever<br \/>\nforget the way<br \/>\nshe looked into my eyes.<\/p>\n<p>I had to take my eyes away &#8211;<br \/>\nshe was staring<br \/>\ndeep into my soul.<\/p>\n<p>I had no defence.<br \/>\nSheepishly I turned away,<br \/>\nlooked out the window.<\/p>\n<p>Fear is the enemy<br \/>\nof happiness.<br \/>\nOnly love can conquer it.<\/p>\n<p>That girl on the tram &#8211;<br \/>\nwill I ever forget her?<br \/>\nUnlikely, I think.<\/p>\n<p>If perfect beauty<br \/>\nstill exists, it was visible<br \/>\nin that girl&#8217;s face.<\/p>\n<p>Her dark oval eyes<br \/>\nstill gaze into the depths<br \/>\nof my hesitant soul.<\/p>\n<p>The feeling<br \/>\nthat nothing really matters<br \/>\nmarked our trip to Benidorm.<\/p>\n<p>What haunts me<br \/>\nis the thought that these poems of mine<br \/>\nare going nowhere.<\/p>\n<p>Let go of unnecessary ideas<br \/>\nand put things in perspective.<\/p>\n<p>Her frank disarming gaze<br \/>\npenetrated<br \/>\nto the depths of my being.<\/p>\n<p>I still see those<br \/>\nutterly expressionless eyes<br \/>\ngazing into mine.<\/p>\n<p>Thought dissolves into<br \/>\nempty-mindedness,<br \/>\nspeech turns into nembutsu.<\/p>\n<p>Manna to the soul &#8211;<br \/>\nmoments of meditation<br \/>\nin Alicante.<\/p>\n<p><em>(Three days later)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I found myself staring<br \/>\nat her deep dark eyes<br \/>\nand dreaming of Kuan Yin.<\/p>\n<p>To inflict as little<br \/>\npain as possible<br \/>\nis one of my main goals.<\/p>\n<p>The fast tram back<br \/>\nto El Campello skims past<br \/>\neverlasting beaches.<\/p>\n<p>Neptune is the most spiritual<br \/>\nplanet, and is now<br \/>\nat her strongest.<\/p>\n<p>What else have those eyes<br \/>\nseen since they encountered mine?<br \/>\nI will never know.<\/p>\n<p>Does the utter nonsense<br \/>\non Spanish news<br \/>\nbother those heavenly eyes?<\/p>\n<p>Trees in a park.<br \/>\nAny old trees, any old park,<br \/>\nflash past the window.<\/p>\n<p>I tremble like a jelly<br \/>\nremembering what her eyes<br \/>\ndid to me.<\/p>\n<p>Reading these poems<br \/>\non our last day in Las Ramblas<br \/>\nI&#8217;m still impressed.<\/p>\n<p>I never spoke to her.<br \/>\nI only saw her once.<br \/>\nAlways remembered.<\/p>\n<p><em>Brujas, 13 de marzo &#8217;17.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GIRL ON A TRAM Old age encounters girlhood on a tram from Benidorm. Reflections on the norm. Our tram is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olioweb.me.uk\/marcus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}