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.