On some sofa beside me
almost a song, lifted a leaf
of as if it were sheet music
we used to say, innocent score,
fumbling hands. I was alone
with a piece of paper
what could I do but read it,
and it was blank, so
what could I do but write?

2.
That’s not how it began,
it feels like that still.
The triangulation: muscles
moving in the fingers,
mechanism of the keyboard
object moving in space—
and the sound coming out.
In this triangle someone
could find a self and spend a life.

3.
But it didn’t happen that way too.
You were always with me–
you being the shape of the other,
the answering voice I needed to answer,
the mountain across the river,
you absolute horizon.

4.
That’s closer to how it began.
How I began. Before that
the crowded waiting room
called childhood, where the one
lesson is to learn to be alone.
At least until the mountain comes along.

5.
Now we’re all here together,
naked in history,
learning to read
by finding the secret lover
in every book,
childhood is a state that never ends.

6.
Time to join
the whirlpool and the wolf,
the hunger and the hurry.
Take in as you are taken in
until you reach the quick
(means living) center of time
(means now) (and you means me).

7.
So on this altarpiece is shown
the transubstantiation
of time to space, space
is what we always have,
space loves us, time
is just an accident of travel,
space loves us, sits always
beside us on the sofa,
stretches out with us in bed,
walks to the corner store with us,
helps us find the mountain,
lets us lean against the tree
and fish in our pocket,
that special space, to find
whatever strange thing it is
we think we need. It’s there
all round me. It holds my hand.

                                                       4 August 2020