Hark! A sound echoes:
Black-winged flutes crouch on stone
Oddly elegiac.

One day while I sifted through the masses
Of books that fortify the walls of my home
Like paper stones
I found a forgotten thought beneath a destitute
Red cloth binding.

The page had seen a printing press once.
In the days when the corners were not
Crumbling
Before it had been left to drink
The sun
To shade an antediluvian yellow
And was torn from its spine.

The ink has faded away now,
Melted in the whispers of time,
All that's left is a blank page
And one word written by an anonymous hand:
*Palimpsest

Steam from a hot drink,
Immersing the nose
With sweet, foreign scents,
Dried ‘neath distant skies.
 
The night thrives outside,
Slipping outside walls,
Through open windows
Comes moonlit breezes.
 
Outside, owls inquire,
In soft, solemn tones,
‘Who, who.’ A question
Without an answer.
 
Though insects cry out,
‘Me meee, Me meee,’ like
They wish the bird spoke
Exclusively to them.
 
And I sit inside,
Listening to lives
I’ll never understand,
Made aloof by the day.

Wind.
whipping at your hair
which writhes alive
as your two narrow wheels
catapult down &
       down
            the grainy earth
            in loose clouds of dust
            while you turn
corners,
trusting rubber treads
to cleave to the trail
as gravity changes
direction.

It's a steep, slick path
and all you hear
is Wind
and all you feel
is Wind
and it's like you're standing
                 still
with an avalanche
of trees
and rocks
and time
crashing past your line of vision
as if planet earth suddenly discovered
it could fly
and at that moment
you discovered
the perfect vantage point.

Years from now,
When even the future is but a distant echo
In the ears of humanity's descendants
And the remnants of the present
- languages and cultures -
Are preserved on scraps of paper
With bits of faded ink,
Historians will wonder
At our casual representation
Of so powerfully destructive
A word.

You exist
As a means of action
And your job
Is well done.

You yourself
Make the world stand still
While I struggle
To learn my lesson.

I find
Every moment without your presence
Feels like a
Waste of an opportunity...

To learn,
To live,
To love,
To exist,
Like you do.