This surface across which my daily eyes sweep –
while glimpsing the wood beneath the papers,
the unwashed mug, the dying flowers –
I won’t go on, we all have our lives
spread out sprawling
which no amount of throat-clearing and resolutions
ever gets tidy;
this flatness across which I’m just a flicked photo,
or defined by a few scribbled words
and shuffled with others into a folder
to be shelved or shredded
or filed in a cabinet for someone
to pull me up on a glowing screen, 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 awaken an awareness
in which disappearing things appear slide
and shuck off name and number –
to know what knowing knows. 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 labile surface.
Polish can't make it smooth. Rich with knots and splintering,
the heartwood unspells all.