Poem: August 25, 2019

Ars Poetica

I come back, always, squeezing
sand and water in my hands, shaping
what I have in front of me into
some shape, rough and unfinishable,
that approximates what small
handfuls I can reach inside myself,
stripping away dimension, letting
only part of the light in, certain I
can satisfy myself, less certain I
can make sense to others, everything
crumbling on the page as it does,
and given that the days shift, slide,
and we all have our own shadows,
and blowing winds, and distances,
and lapping tides, and hours in
the day in which the light is just so.
So who can say, even, what we've
built together, who can say what
we've built alone? Press your fingers
in deep and it starts to fall away. But
I come back, always, rubbing hands
along grainy surfaces, building broken
cathedrals to celebrate, to bear witness
to the elegance of erosion and decay.