Free Will

Letting the bath run
I sat on the toilet & thought about
keeping the plug in till the water spilt
which made me think if all things
have as their cause what happened
how can you change course, prior
will spilling through you or some
unseen drain blocked with gunk, like
in the case of cloves it wasn’t that
the smell drove the Dutch to kill &
pillage but that it told them they were
nearly there & maybe would do anything
to get it, it being what would spill
through them unabated. Why do you
ask? Why do you care? The last time
we met I tried to smell what the Dutch
smelt, the air full of burning cloves, the
crematorium guard smoking clove
cigarettes, smoke rising from him like
the taxi rank outside Schiphol airport
in March; ‘Baker Street’ by Gerry
Rafferty was playing & after forty years
you were still in mourning, moaning
inwardly, letting every sound spill
through & out of you like water.