Interval 189

it whispers its way through to me, the night,

in the dying light of day, the things done,

the slow dissolve of sense, the list of smiles

ticked one by one from memory, a frown

or inimical face, best forgotten:

a word that laid waste to what was said, said

and being said settles in beside, to sleep

or not to sleep, but come for company,

the accord of all that comes to mind, comes

and goes with the turning of the world, mind

in the middle of itself, in the night:

it whispers its way through to me, the light,

the word that would undo me, would un-say

the waste of the slowly dissolving day

Étude 15

a small heap of snow, left over

from a world’s wintering, a white patch

of remaining wonder: we were so cold for a while,

the world and I, the huddle of clothes holding on,

held on to, and the numbness, dumbness:

it bites into the bone, the ice of it, the frozen

freeze again in the graves, rest in rigid peace,

let them, soon to be forgotten, of frost

a fond memory, my hands warming to the words,

to the breath of them, and so, to go on:

for the quiet was, and will be again, whatever,

and I and the world may be comforted, consoled,

to walk up to the ankles in streets soft as a whisper,

with the echoes, the remembrances, each

a name to itself, etched, as mine, in the trace,

the melting, step by step, yard after yard:

a small heap of flowers, left behind:

let me gather them up in my mind,

and the grass grow again, to receive them,

the bleached white of the bones, gleaming in the sun

A Disappearance

She was no longer there. A whisper perhaps.

Which might be the very thing she wished.

The wish itself. To hang in the air.

To stir the ear. Faint shifts from beyond the door.

A walk past the window. Absence.

Going about its business. Its silence.

A word heard through the wall. A familiar.

The breath of a stranger. Near by.

And close to the turning of a page. Its sound.

Of fingers sliding down. From edge to edge.

Across to the other. To further words.

Waiting too to be heard. Time going by.

To where she was. There in the distance.

With the wish itself.