Palimpsest

Palimpsest

Recovery is like a wind that shakes off the leaves

and then they flee.

 

I can hear the wind in my limbs

I can dream of wind through fevered sleep

 

and wake to a bare yard.

 

I am entering the middle period

a middle stage

and you and everyone else

are blowing away from me.

 

I reach for you

in your younger form

with longer hair

and suppler frame

 

and there you are

all of you.

 

When the rains come

and I stand out here, sweating, trembling

waiting to know when the rain I have waited for

will end

I feel each of you eating from my hand

like baby birds

 

and then you fly out the window

and I wake to my own rain.

 

You and every colour that must accompany you

-how they change each time I see you

you must walk with a parasol

and the wind must take the fabric

up with everything else

and lift it with a thousand more birds

cleanly from the trees.

 

If I could gather all of you

together like a flock again

I would finally feel I am of a flock

and not cry out to a sky that turns a thinner blue

before bursting into deep space.

-Jeremy Nathan Marks

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