Timers
Understand this. It is an error to think that
One need obviates another. Picture the parts
Of yourself as a row of egg timers: differing
Amounts of sand are left, your job is to watch, but
Realize,
You cannot watch them all. Some
Will fall,
Regardless of your attending to them, or not,
Some demand more. This one, which
Happens to contain some deep, essential
Grain of you, it scales
The same fascination with down as the rest -
Watch for a time, observe how quickly or
Slowly,
You
Run out
Is it possible to know,
The point at which more becomes less?
This [] does not exist
And at times, we find we miss the gestural
Exuberance of action painting, need
Some tension for things to feel real. Quick then
Slow then quick proliferation of a dangerous
Disquisition. Look away, and everyone’s a
Mononym. It’s just how we learn about things
These days. Storms pass through; weather’s lossy
Compression. What’s left? Sky damage,
Dissociative trees.
This is water
After David Foster Wallace
The trick is in where to place your attention
And where not to place it
Example one
You're in up to your neck before you realise it's deeper
Than comfortable, salt lapping chin -
Barely a toehold on the bottom
And you keep going
And you keep going
A kind of shuffle shuffle hop,
Because you want to give him this exact
Memory, floating, looking back at you,
Laughter spraying from him as he kicks out of reach
Example two
Superhero minutiae
Example three
His weight is a thing he heaps on you in sudden
Handfuls, warm and generous after sleep -
He still tucks into you with a precision you don't
Have to think about, while you try not to think about all the things
You should be thinking about.
You let him eat the brownies in bed, just
To contain the gather of him a moment longer
Example four
Even turbulence can be normalized with enough effort -
When the wheels hit tarmac you'll find eight
Identical wet moons, on the softest part inside your cheeks,
Where you bit right through.
Victoria Spires grew her wings in the Norfolk fens, but now lives in Northampton, a place which claims to be in the middle of England, both geographically and tonally. Her poems scribble in the margins of obscure philosophy, overheard ideas, nature, the body, and love. Her work has been featured in Flight of the Dragonfly journal, Comfort Zone poetry anthology, The Nuthatch, The Poetry Lighthouse, Freeverse Revolution Lit, and The Winged Moon.
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