ÉTUDE 21
so we spoke, well into the night, of selves
mingling, meetings held in the mind, trying
to find a way through the words, to where
there were none, no one for what there was
to say: the blackberry, say, bearing the weight
of a poem, the distant fruit of forgetting,
the bare facts of being there, remember, your hand
reaching in to the bramble, the arch of thorns,
for the taste to come, and the trace that
lingered, long after the dark, of parting,
the stain fading: the light goes, the lack
remains, the music merely repeats itself,
my ear to it, but no more mine than the ear
that first heard it, reached up to it,
to draw it down to the touch, to the fingers
writing it, gently now, the promise between them:
we met, so the words say, somewhere,
in search of memory, the mind’s freight
dragged through the tract of days: we spoke:
of selves enduring the night’s silence
Osiris 96, 2022
Osiris Poetry 