Worn patterns
“and there is a swarm of objects that call without being answered,
and a ceaseless movement, and a bewildered man.”
. (Pablo Neruda)
Watching a hand trail the worn pattern of
embroidered leaves on a threadbare sheet:
A hand, softly trembling – its surface,
cold and cratered like a careless moon,
barely containing the veins that slowly
speed towards death;
a hand, half-remembering touching the sunlight
in the hair of a girl, half feeling her skin
and the beat of a heart
rise to the rhythms of lust:
Half-raised, the hand now seems to observe a head
that lies on the cushion, no longer dreaming of a past.