Poem
Jane Gibian
Vessels for the lapse of time (1)
Vessels for the lapse of time (1)
Vessels for the lapse of time (1)
1. Nested squaresWhat could be held in a month
of your calendar, in the pleached grid
of those windows, that spills out of mine
like water overflowing the rectangular
depressions of an icecube tray? A day
melts and stretches lazily into evening
in the sudden summer, and we place
our palms flat against the sun’s captured
heat, coursing from brick walls along
each street: from here each day\'s
a window, lined up in a crooked row
like teeth inside a laughing mouth.
Flattened grass in the shape of our bodies
was still there the day after: we tried
to hold those days in cupped hands
but they trickled slyly through your fingers.
Walking past a window uncovered
to the night, that flash of someone’s life
added to the inventory of sights
I collected to make you smile, an answer
to the compressed biography of postcards,
bound to the span of time in its nested
squares. Daylong we crossed disputed
territories, daylong I looked into
the battered rectangle of a pocket mirror
with its cracked corner and saw myself
divided. In the calendar’s endless fretwork
you give each part of the day equal
thought; weight them evenly in your grasp,
until it’s time to pull at a thread in the day
and watch it unravel behind us.
© 2006, Jane Gibian
From: The Honey Fills the Cone: Newcastle Poetry Prize Anthology 2006
Publisher: Hunter Writers Centre, Newcastle
From: The Honey Fills the Cone: Newcastle Poetry Prize Anthology 2006
Publisher: Hunter Writers Centre, Newcastle
Poems
Poems of Jane Gibian
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Vessels for the lapse of time (1)
1. Nested squaresWhat could be held in a month
of your calendar, in the pleached grid
of those windows, that spills out of mine
like water overflowing the rectangular
depressions of an icecube tray? A day
melts and stretches lazily into evening
in the sudden summer, and we place
our palms flat against the sun’s captured
heat, coursing from brick walls along
each street: from here each day\'s
a window, lined up in a crooked row
like teeth inside a laughing mouth.
Flattened grass in the shape of our bodies
was still there the day after: we tried
to hold those days in cupped hands
but they trickled slyly through your fingers.
Walking past a window uncovered
to the night, that flash of someone’s life
added to the inventory of sights
I collected to make you smile, an answer
to the compressed biography of postcards,
bound to the span of time in its nested
squares. Daylong we crossed disputed
territories, daylong I looked into
the battered rectangle of a pocket mirror
with its cracked corner and saw myself
divided. In the calendar’s endless fretwork
you give each part of the day equal
thought; weight them evenly in your grasp,
until it’s time to pull at a thread in the day
and watch it unravel behind us.
From: The Honey Fills the Cone: Newcastle Poetry Prize Anthology 2006
Vessels for the lapse of time (1)
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