Leaving Taichung Station

 

The Cord in The Wall

Tins and kettles and rain harnessed: time

Peeled and juiced like dragon fruit—

The glucose-walled chambers of the shelving selves of things.

Peppers and a phone cord dried along the skeleton of my grandmother’s wall:

The crisp crunch of the wind inside the steps taken on the way to her grave—

Listen

The cord in the wall still plugged in.

A wrist that carries the dragon seeds of the dead now clipped

Along the bellow’d bone of its travels: desert

And time and elapsed moments

Running for home.

Neither darkness nor border have dominion

And love shall remain,

Free

And the rooms that have gone, scattering 

Yet there you are remaining

With light and liquor and love

And all that stills

Bridging

Not there nor truly gone, ever.

for: Edith J. Black