Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Something lingers after we have left.
The feeling in a room, not scent,
not even a flake of skin, a cell.

It is to do with presence, about a shadow
not quite leaving in synchrony,
a step behind, fluid on the carpet.

When the lights are off, shadows mass.
Think of the edge of a pound coin
rolled across the floor. Later we rolled up

the carpet, and underneath found a memory
that stuck to us like spiderweb, and
the slow platitude of daylight dissolved

all that the furniture stood for.
Pass through the silence that walls
are built of. It sounds as if the neighbours

are singing softly, but you cannot be sure
it is not the ghost of yourself, a shadow
waiting to happen, edging closer.

We have been here before, many mornings
matching shadow with step. Sometimes
it is impatient, wants me to get to work

but in a different world in which
we still pace over the wet bathroom floor,
and there is sometimes one left when you

turn on the light: the spider in the bath,
essence of dryness. It does not like
the book I spread before it,

rides as far as it needs to go, spins out
a thread, catches the wind of me walking,
and is gone. Each day I add another visitor

leaping from me onto the same ground.
A million shadows is a sheet of dust,
enough to burn the pattern out of the carpet,

to powder the gleam in the mirror
and at length return, one evening,
at the moment my finger clicks

off the bedside lamp: a person
easily confusible with myself, but
shaved and dressed as if for a funeral.