~ after Sei Shonagon
All I have no influence over,
what I can't control: nerve
pain shooting down my right hip
and thigh at night. Pencil strokes
of grey outlining my hairline.
The way my mind climbs up a never-
ending stairway whose end I can't
see, except I know it's still
a long way off, cloaked in mist
and overhung with rocks. The way it
tries to reverse direction, believing
it will come, with patience, to the point
before everything changed, before a rift
in the earth made mosaics in every wall.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
