Nine Pages

The gouge is in the fibres

As if permanence were

          dependant

Solely on the fury of the hand

Each syllable a bird

         Chiselling the sky

         Not a cloudbleak day

But

Lines challenging erasure

As if this were a palimpsest

For a greater world

Where all the fragments

        I forgot

Cajoled

            In the dance of thunder

A trailed whisper

The shock yet to come

I pour out the glass

Shake the aching in my wrist

      Bone cracking like the onset hail

    Are you listening

Through the detritus of time

   Dig a little deeper

   Strata weak as flesh

Fissile as a moment’s lost idea

Mostly illegible

The space between the lines

          has more to say

   We ache the way

The minotaur does

In our maze

     Divided

The string is frayed

         Ariadne, shorn of her display

Knits up time again

    The hammer knock

Of the torn page

        Throw it out a crumpled

           Day

                  til lost