This guilt offers no getaways,

No spiral path to re-trace,

A walk back to a beginning,

To un-knot the middle

Of a fixed telos set in wet cement.

Except perhaps, a forever of

Slow regret seeping through

The crevices of days.

Book-ways

This landscape of memory,

And the portrait of one

Posing forever, frozen

In some sepia world;

The margins cleared

Of remembered words,

A text of desire paginated

Into an easy understanding

Of the wise ways of the world

Hard-bound now against

The despoiling of time;

Crisp pages, each

Chaptering new moments

Whirled in continuum

Of infinite whiteness

And traces of ink

Scribbling away

New lines on old die-hard tales.