this diminishingaround the edges
of things
gives them form
the way an ancient or
contemporary
text or tablet
grows legible
depending on one's age
and predilection
or the sky releases
just a patch
or pattern of light
one might once have tried
to love
after drop-off in traffic
one's face looks back
tired and exposed
despite everything
one tried to give up
while holding the pose
a little longer
please I hear
pull down the sky and let
the clouds fall down as rain
the recurrent
childhood house
and school
by now impossible
to navigate by heart
nor do phone buttons
work
the overgrown empty field
still runs
beside a kind of station
I'm still standing in
a terminus
from which once
one might have started out
then returned to
by a different route
so elegant
or metaphorical, as in
dreams of such
a place
built in to the high
old way
its glass arched roof
obsolete
and beautiful
the smoke somehow
escapes from
so many people
embracing in the middle
of the marble floor
all day and night
one reckons
mostly supplanted
by rushed
lingering at the curb.
