Light Revisions

Don’t worry. This isn’t the beginning. I know
you, I know how you worry about all that is
to come and so do I, and that’s fine. This has,

at least, been written now, the page turned to
maybe once or twice before, these little letters all
shaped on someone’s tongue. Aren’t colours

really light revised in the eye? All these years
you’ve been buried in your life, whittled roots
into woodwork, set windows in walls, and all

the while thoughts scuffle in the skirting board.
Yours is a familial place, though no one else
has dug into this moment before. But familiar

to you as your mother’s elbows, grandfather
clock, heirloom tomatoes. All these blue hours
spent pacing the hall as if it were a throat,

scrubbing the old floorboards down to dirt,
scouring your hands thin just for some sound,
vowelless, fricative – Shh. Don’t be afraid.

You’ve known far too long what it is to love
a closed door. And how to knock. It’s time
you did some speaking. There’s a sea out there

calling for its name. Don’t worry about me.
What’s left is just revision, just working out
the pitch, like a gull hones sharp the angle

of the plunge beneath the wing. Shorelines amending
themselves to the tide. Or, the way each line lies
flat upon the last (this is not the last), each life

accounts for its loss, each word cradles its
extinct species. Or, more like how the last time
you left, I knew where to meet you.

Patrick James Errington