This surface across which my daily eyes sweep –
while glimpsing the grain beneath the papers,
the unwashed mug, the dying flowers –
I won’t go on, we all have our lives
spread out and sprawling
which no amount of throat-clearing and resolutions
ever gets tidy;
this flatness across which I’m just a flicked photo,
or recorded in a few scribbled words
and shuffled with others into a folder
to be shelved or shredded
or filed on a database for someone
to pull me out, whenever they like, assess my profile,
and shrug or sigh;
so, if I must be conjured up by a seeing,
may I be placed under an open window
to receive the shadows of the living oak –
so a vibrant form may shimmer
and stir an awakening
in which disappearing things appear, slide,
and shuck off name and number –
to be bare enough for knowing – that all the marks
and scars – like those stick figures and words
(‘Big Steve’, Nick+Judy’) carved in classroom desks
and now ‘in banking’, or ‘car-crash’, or ‘who? where?-
speak from a shifting surface.
Polish can’t make it smooth. Rich with knots and splintering,
the heartwood unspells all.