Abide
—After the Reasons Are Gone
The morning held its breath.
Cold iron rail of dawn,
air tasting faintly of dust and leaf-mould.
Somewhere a gate complained;
somewhere water counted stones.
I stood where the path once decided things
and now only stood.
The sun rose wrong—
a cracked egg tone, pale yolk leaking
through thin cloud,
light smelling of metal.
It touched the roofs, then withdrew,
as if remembering an appointment
elsewhere.
I felt it on my knuckles,
then not.
Wind moved the hedges by inches.
A bird rehearsed and stopped.
I adjusted my sleeve;
the gesture meant nothing
and meant it fully.
Then a bus passed.
In its window,
a damsel’s lucent eyes
met mine—
and the glimmer sparked
like a live wire
brushed by accident—
brief,
and already too late.
The bus kept moving.
The eyes did not.
They traveled farther than the bus,
carried a heart with them,
and let it slip out—
light,
unclaimed—
onto the road beside me.
By then the sun was gone entirely.
Only weather remained:
coolth on the tongue,
the faint oil-slick sheen of asphalt,
my breath learning its own pace again.
I bent, not to retrieve anything—
only to see
what stays
when nothing calls it.
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