This Is Also True

a song of experience

Photo by Akin Cakiner on Unsplash

“Pictures–or it didn’t happen,” she commands.
But it did and in the photographic synapses
into which it was all burned as if with acid,
nightmares still sometimes arise.

One hand etched with age and longing
growing from imagination’s heat
lies wilted on a wide white slab
twitching to grasp what is not there.

A child’s cry attenuated by distance
squeaking with airy thinness
streams across miles and water
gathers strength then abruptly fades.

In deep night with no stars or moon
silent as the turtle on whose back
the world labors and groans,
tangible blackness erases faces.

These patches of poison are real,
made and make their own histories,
prove that time is just another dimension
from which nothing escapes alive.