The Scattered

Inside a library of things uncountable, clippings, extracts, jottings, and snippets gather words out of nothing. Mind dust wafts. A woman approaches with an armful of my early, roughly cobbled poems. behind her, unwritten books begin to fall off bookless shelve. “Don’t worry” she says, she is Scottish and actually says: “dinna fash yersel.” An old Celtic grandma peeps out of her eyes. The enormity of everything overcomes the moment. She places the fragmented scribblings in an untidy pile upon a small reading table. The thought of a ‘reading table’ amuses me; she smiles while the rest of her vanishes. After reading all the table had to offer, I leave the building empty-handed. Outside, a mackerel sky begins to rewrite some passing clouds, Like myself, it is constantly editing and revising its reality the way a bowl fish does when it swims full circle.