Ay, what a long, long, long day—I almost skipped writing altogether…

Long silences don’t punctuate the day so much
as they do send it screaming between the spaces

Conversations scratch and skip over the surface
dissonance bleeds into every pore

The unrelenting march becomes a stampede
but the immovable object adamantly refuses all entreaties

Water has a decision to make: to flow around the rock
or wash it away with the rest of the debris

Meanwhile the permanence of the marker is called into question
but it’s too late—the stain has already set

Maybe someone will remember the poet who once sat here—
after the paper has disintegrated, leaving the ink behind

Somewhere between gravity and evaporation lies the ether
we won’t be going home again anytime soon

(26 March 2018)