We’ll call it Garance
this passage of silence
between foam and cry
a singular dawn
that displaces the ivy
on the gray-ravaged walls
A step across the void
as the hours unfold
just time for a hand
on a shoulder already bare
a woman once unknown
asks her way down the road
That amble that recoil
of the horse you persuade
to be carried away
by the unsayable cadence
of a recumbent statue’s dance
in a space of invention
All things suspended
on this sentence now rendered
in the weft of an instant
still so intangible
that to brush off its sands
means scattering time
Time just the fur
of the moat and the beach
just the robe of a leopard
to cast over the bones
of this life you scrape away
on manuscripts astray