As If to Misread Song

It felt so normal to be ‘inspected,’ ‘looked at,’

‘examined,’ ‘explored,’ ‘interrogated’—

why does the perceptually deprived brain play such tricks?

Still firing off, cleaning up the sopping wetness

of the clouds with a snuffed-out candle wick. The spider

can’t be frightened into a jar. Imagine remembering anything

about those years other than pure sensation—

could the tree do it? The stump of one fallen

nourished for centuries by its surroundings. After some

time I learned to pay attention to ah and oh

and hey—body demanding a toll when another

eventually wanted to enter. At last, to guess instead

of knowing—saying now when the feeling came

strongest: how I miss the future, it’s sideways surrender.

I have since only rarely seen the tree—it puts into my ears

the sounds of all the people living without me:

the dark oaks of the dining room, every knife buried

among the airport car park—letterboxes

where there should have been a lake. Imagine if

afterwards everything can be pure sensation:

sugar-fed and alive in its dismantling.

Source: PoetryNow, 2019