[In memory of Peter De Jode]
means regret, one buried
under years of longing
or two or three making
skin tingle as from touches
you will never forget.
A painter carves into layers
past memories frozen
in tableau: a brother's
suicide, a mother's electric
shock treatment. Abstract,
we say, because the world
as we've seen it can be so
unbearable. Which is why
we try to read into dusty
ghosts where perhaps old
appliances sat, tarred
rooflines still on sides
of row-houses long
after next-doors
have been demolished,
charcoal shadows of what
were once craters,
eruptions erasing
edges, only rims
remaining. There
are hundreds of
texts bereft of their
past lives, wax tablets
where countless
scribes left their
delible marks. He sees
gold leaf on the surface &
wonders how to mine
those few veins.
No regrets.