Karma Chameleon

THIS MORNING I witnessed a death. I was driving home, out of town and into the country. As a novelist I naturally notice things and ahead of me on the road, moving slowly--very slowly--swivel-eyed and hesitating step-by-step, was a young chameleon. I took care to avoid him and drove up to my gate. Whilst I waited for the gardener to open the gate I looked back at the chameleon, still on its hazardous journey across the road. I thought, My heart's with you guy, but I don't think you'll make it. Immediately, a kombi hurtled down that stretch of road, its driver oblivious to the tiny creature; amazingly it missed the chameleon. But the car following quickly behind didn't and the creature was spun into the air and landed, inert, on the road. And then a truck rushed along and squashed it flat. And I was thinking, that's a life lesson right there, isn't it? One moment you're here; the next moment you're gone. For that chameleon, the struggle is over; for us the daily struggles go on: but also the joys, the triumphs and ephemeral achievements of what all of us call life.

c Kenneth Rowley 2015

watching them lower his box

watching them lower his box

Watching them lower his box into the earth
I remember all too well his passions:
the wine, the women, the song;
and silently I whisper,
“Don’t worry my friend. I’ll be joining you
before not too long.”

There was Sophie, a sophomore
when he met her;
they stayed together,
on-and-off, for over twenty years.
Never married. Often fought.
When she finally walked out,
he couldn’t forget her
even though she had ruined his life.

His favourite wine was Chablis, always cold.
The song was Beethoven’s--the Eroica.
Always too short for him,
it was ever too long for me.

Ah, but I loved him.

He had three jackets, I remember:
his blue leather ‘James Dean’ one;
an expensive tweed;
and one his father had given him,
a black one, that he only wore to funerals.
That was the one he hated.
No trousers ever matched that jacket.
He was never suited for death.

A thin rain pours thinly from a grey mournful sky.
I look again at the ground.
His box is gone now. Fat earth covers it.
The soil is damp and only waits for worms.