The dreams I’d left there:
bits of porcelain and again
bits of light —
all the murksome barlight
gathered up and fragile.
The thin bowl of the hashpipe
useless as before, millioned
against the wall: the tin
stem, the hand of the maker
and all the marks of me blown.
And there, beneath a train’s
inalienable spark, what screeches
is neither the weight of iron
or freight, but the orange
departure of a listless mind
Beguiled not by the glow
but the tamping out, that
slender asp of ash and smoke,
the death of it, defiant —
singular in its throes.
And down below the Redline,
below the timbers and bolts
tarred against decay, soft soles
and quicksilver rain the weary
clamber for any open door.
That is what I left,
beside the oak, assertive again
in the cracks and boulevards
while the sidewalk buckled
and fell away, chunked dismissive.
Image: Shahadat Rahman on Unsplash
Sweet and Bitter Greens 