Sunday 14 April 2019

For Threes

Back in the 90s, around the time a big ship was about to hit the big screen,
There was an electronic music album by Plaid called 'Not for Threes'.
I think it was around this time it all started,
I might have listened to it three times, or it could have been the third song, number three, that got me wondering.
Three is the number of the holy trinity,
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
Words spoken in threes
Once, twice, thrice.
If I turned the key in the lock three times,
Would you think twice about it?
Or might you think three times just to feel that sense of completeness
Click, click, click
Off the latch.

I order my poems in three sections.
That being the first, this the second, the third is yet to come.
I turn over the page and it's once, twice, three times empty.
They say that three's a crowd,
But when you feel that aloneness, is it not when you're alone in the crowd, but instead among three
The words passing across you, through the air as you stare
Blankly.
If I said your love would disappear one afternoon at three, dropping like lunch, your spirit, and everything else that seems to deflate mid-afternoon like a pin took to a balloon
The sound is that of three, turning around three times
Spun and flung in the air
Smiles between them but not on your face.
Maybe I've misunderstood three,
How many times, probably more than three,
Have I depended for three things to win an argument.
If I take a topic and like to feel I've covered it totally, finished the thought one might say,
Trust me it's three.
The sun, the sea, the sand.
The sky, the ocean, the breeze.
Flowers, petals, trees.
I could go on with examples
Of three
Things
I do before bed
Or getting up in the morning
The time barely past three
When all of a sudden
It's no longer three things I need.
I forgive you I think I do
For being the third
Bronze medal.

The third time is always the sweetest,
The first, you don't care,
The second, you don't know,
The third, you have learned.
If you gave me three chances to do it again
I'd like to think by the third time I'll have it right.
But even if I haven't and keep making the same mistake
Like seeing no further than the third step
When the earth is burning is beyond the fourth
There's always three
Again.
If I said that one day we'd create life from three
parents
Would you say this is the start of some new paradisiacal society
Or the turning of yet another
Set of threes
Unsure of the next
Turn
Where everything is possible.