PHILIP GROSS

Concentrations

Sit
             quiet
and in time

the mind uncurls
like paper flowers in water.

It is only the idea
of flowers
                 which however

(off out of sight
yet never closer)

do exist, as

light does, as does water.

 

Shift
               slightly
and a floorboard gives,

a syllable, or less:
the timbre of a voice

which states, notwithstanding,
that the floor has knowledge of you,

the flowering-out of load
from where you touch,

just as the air accommodates /

accommodates its slight self to
your breathing. Yes,

you would be missed.

 

Drip
               of this moment, and this,

no clock tick, no points de suspension,
not a sign-your-name-here dotted line

but each apart
                        as a drop in a dark
cave lake, its ripples spreading and

reflect/deflected from the unseen
edges, interference

patterns where they mesh from this
side, this and this, which make

a texture that for want
of words we might call Me.

 

Salt
               taste, unexplaining of itself,
a surprise to the mind from the body,

from the corner of the eye down my cheek
to the tip of my tongue, just a drip

of the litres per day that rain down through us
not to mention
                           the mist of you and me

inside the windscreen, or the shadow

on the undersheet: our dispersal
with time into space. We might be drying

out slowly, to a hot and frosty glitter
like a shallow rock pool in the sun.

 

 

Heart
               to heartbeat,
these dumb

beasts of burden (each
breath out returning, or a deep

consideration of the small intestine
now and then,
the eyelid’s faithful blink)

that carry us
home,
               one foot
behind another, even when

we’re sleeping, self-
forgotten,

steady as we go.