as our time grows less
Stephen House
a tall pale white girl in aqua bikinis dances on the beach while a black guy in a red singlet photographs her with his phone / they look happy and in love / after the photos they sit on a rock arm in arm looking at the phone together / i smile thinking about youth and beauty
a group of young men play in the waves at the water’s edge / they are all heavily tattooed / there is a tribe-like feel to their group and it seems as though a drum should be beating in time to their antics / i smile thinking about friendship and mates
an older man is laying on the bed in his campervan reading a book with the side and back doors of the van open / it looks as though he lives in the van / i catch a glimpse of the cover of the book and spot the word meditation / i smile thinking about journeys and exploration
out the front of a block of beachside flats a woman in a japanese style dressing gown and drinking from a bottle of beer is watching her small pug dog run up and down the footpath / occasionally she breaks into laughter when the dog barks at someone walking by / i smile thinking about loving an animal and being true to oneself
an elderly woman with a walking stick is paddling in the ocean shallows / she moves slowly now and then stopping to rest / two young women jog past her and she watches them until they are almost out of sight / i smile thinking about my own old age rapidly taking over and the way we tend to observe more as our time grows less
i sit on a bench overlooking the sea and watch people moving along the path and beach / sometimes someone smiles at me as they pass and i smile back / i feel completely attached to the human moments i witness taking place / i’m happy thinking about how lucky i am to have been born and to smile so often at what people do around me
Stephen House has won many awards and nominations as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s had 20 plays produced with many published by Australian Plays Transform. He’s received several international literature residencies from The Australia Council for the Arts, and an Asialink India literature residency. He’s had two chapbooks published by ICOE Press Australia: ‘real and unreal’ poetry and ‘The Ajoona Guest House’ monologue. His next book drops soon. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely. Stephen’s play, ‘Johnny Chico,’ ran in Spain for 4 years.