Giving Up
It’s not that it’s too difficult –
thoughts eating into rock
can carve out provenance.
It’s not that it’s not worth doing –
a sift of contaminants
leads inwards to origins.
It’s not that I can’t rise to challenges –
the natural buoyancy
of magma lifts it
through the solid earth.
It’s the unending grind of it –
rocks into fragments over aeons
to sediment and back again,
the drip of acid through resin,
the greying of green, pink and white
like a rose in fog where heavy air
drives perfume into hiding;
a notebook where stray phrases
nestle amongst columns of figures
and never become poems.
It’s the lab at night, and you elsewhere.
Page(s) 26
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