Living With Apostrophe

by Richard Taylor

It is not there and fills me, the salient void
that takes a vacant hand and tugs it
into the slim interstices between the ridges
of a carved hill.

The paths run asymptotic, and we’ll meet
in infinity, so far as we know, dash straight past
the fractal shapes and colors, people
who multiply themselves,

grow or shrink to know each other safe
in a day’s mortal perfection.  You and I
don’t bother them; they’ve long been here, granted
temporary asylum

like ourselves, except we are of those
created approximate, at odds to a fit, and so
must hurry on to riskier magnitudes.
I’ve known my leap

into the sundry abyss, the slow pool borrowing
its chill peace from the river’s roar, listened
to the bottom of the owl’s soft hoot
a moment longer

than the crowd would stay, when the wakeful
silence rings ethereal and thin.  The gap abides,
a lacuna with no clock, the ellipsis ever pending
our arrival,

hearts beating like wings quivering to light,
an apostrophe flitting above the quickened
word that hurries across an empty room,
the rain clean glade,

a lake taut and smooth as an eardrum to voices
on the other side of our blank and single space,
guessing about asylum in alien arms,
distance apart

become inner, where forgotten innocence returns
our cold star to a meadow full of daisies
to show you, if you come upon a moment wondering
what to do with itself.