To be quiet and not crush...

To be quiet and not crush

the little paper aeroplanes of your sleep

I have witnessed and rehearsed the slender defection of your belongings,

as if the moon’s paparazzi flash

through the blinds made a negative of our lives.

The white square

that will fall if the door handle turns

is not a blouse;

that long, smooth box

left too close to the edge

not your glasses case;

rockpools over which I stumble

toward morning’s long shore

not your shoes.

A tray opens its unkempt hand,

no longer able to hold the sift

of diffident, indifferent years.

No matter how slowly I move,

make my Balinese dance between furniture, I betray

their fidelity, their regret for us, our hard edges.

At my touch their banked life wakens

from starlight’s gilt album.

​

Materiality, July 2014