by Michael Rutherglen
Surely there are teeth so small.
I have listened for their turning,
this frail swell and fall
like old blood yearning
upwards through the skin of days.
Slowly, I am learning
their count, though numbers fray
in me, and the loaded instants
graft, coming always
to the same tangle: the distant
cry merging with the song
at hand, the rain’s insistent
opening in daylong
dryness, the plain moon
draining into dawn.
And below it all, hewn
from the pliant light of some
Geneva noon,
they spin time’s thrum.
Stopped, I have bent my ears
to them. I have become
sound inside their years.
Surely I have known the whole
of grief and grace in gears.
