• Philip Gross

 

and the still-bare branches

not so much seen through

            as inscribed

 

in frosted glass.

                        Every single

thing close; you could wipe it away.

                                    One touch –

all this might undo itself, gather and run.

 

Glassy, too, the acoustic.

                        Each droplet

like a hanging splinter, glinting

                                    not with light

but sound, each bird-pitch, sudden, there

 

and there. And shattered: that's

how brittle our time is

            – hung

 

(we can guess but not see)

                        in the act

of dissolution, its crystalline structure

                                    still in place,

in space: a small universe, in which each

 

from every other particle

                        is always turning,

as if every possible spot

                                    was an exit,

to go.

 

 

 

 

 

from Time in the Dingle, IPSI Chapbook 1