Concentrations
Sit
quiet
and in time
the mind uncurls
like paper flowers in water.
It is only the idea
of flowers
which however
(off out of sight
yet never closer)
do exist, as
light does, as does water.
Shift
slightly
and a floorboard gives,
a syllable, or less:
the timbre of a voice
which states, notwithstanding,
that the floor has knowledge of you,
the flowering-out of load
from where you touch,
just as the air accommodates /
accommodates its slight self to
your breathing. Yes,
you would be missed.
Drip
of this moment, and this,
no clock tick, no points de suspension,
not a sign-your-name-here dotted line
but each apart
as a drop in a dark
cave lake, its ripples spreading and
reflect/deflected from the unseen
edges, interference
patterns where they mesh from this
side, this and this, which make
a texture that for want
of words we might call Me.
Salt
taste, unexplaining of itself,
a surprise to the mind from the body,
from the corner of the eye down my cheek
to the tip of my tongue, just a drip
of the litres per day that rain down through us
not to mention
the mist of you and me
inside the windscreen, or the shadow
on the undersheet: our dispersal
with time into space. We might be drying
out slowly, to a hot and frosty glitter
like a shallow rock pool in the sun.
Heart
to heartbeat,
these dumb
beasts of burden (each
breath out returning, or a deep
consideration of the small intestine
now and then,
the eyelid’s faithful blink)
that carry us
home,
one foot
behind another, even when
we’re sleeping, self-
forgotten,
steady as we go. 