Shadow

Shadow
comes
goes.

Turn toward —
none.

Turn away —
it follows.

Hold the turn —
it lengthens.

See
what remains.

—–

Obsidian

Hearts
of cold glass
forged in earthly fire.

Broken twice
and ready to be
thrust inward —
more — inward.

Polished
to a sheen —

at the core,
opaqueness.

Hold it long enough
and it cuts.

Let go —

watch it
fall.

—–

Proof in Eros

You choose the bruise
over the quiet.

Silence feels
like erasure.

So you strike the air,
wait for it
to strike back.

Better the crack in the wall
than the room
unbroken.

Better the split in the throat
than the long
flat sea.

If it breaks,
if it burns,

my hands,
my hands—

still here,
still.

—–

1915 House

Spiders casting shadows
from their webs.

Draughts eddy
about my ears —
bare.

Moths eat
the underside
of wool.

Mould spreads
where no one looks.

Rain runs
inside the walls.

Should have patched the roof
while the sun was out.

—–

Fossilisation

A man says
dogs can wait
sixteen hours
to piss.

I keep the number.

Years later,
it is still there,
doing nothing,
asking nothing,
never checked.

This
is how facts
begin.

—–

Estate

slowly—
one by one they leave

until the shelves lie free,
trace of poets

dust. air.

children winnow,
picking at the bones

watched—
to see what you keep
and what you leave

—–

The Brother or the Poet

I thought of two men
before they died—
both on the same day.

My brother—
whom I had not seen
since my father’s funeral
sixteen years ago.

And a friend,
whom I last saw
standing beside a grave
that was not yet his.

I thought of reaching out.

But what does one say
when everything that needed saying—
the how, the why—
was already said
years ago
or never began?

Death returns these questions.

Grandparents buried.
Funerals I did not attend.
Roots that never took.

My sister
in the hospital.

I wondered then:
does the brother go,
or the poet?

They are not the same man.

The poet went.
The brother arrived later,
for a while—
until that part of him
was spent.

Perhaps the why
is always the poet.

Now the line runs out.

My brother gone.
My father gone.

No children between us.

The strand stops here.

I am the last one standing
at the edge of a family line.

Death seals the room
but something loosens too.
The quiet end
of obligation.

The ground
where duty lay.

I looked at him
as though he might wake
and make a joke.

In death as in life
expecting a hello.

But the tongue
cannot find its syntax.

What does one say
to the dead?

Only silence—

Apologies surface
that never knew
they were owed.

The poet quiet.
The brother quiet.