A Poem a Day (230): Missing parts

Missing parts

We set sail where we rebegin,

Top and tail each day with sleep,

Speak when we sense a thing is real

And trick time on the upward curve.

We stare inside endless spaces,

Watch crackling flames rise and fall.

My touch is like Midas in reverse,

Contemplating his bad luck in Spades.

I can no longer see the idle hands

Of the dark mist rising around us.

Ill omens write themselves in the sand

And we hurry to scuff them out.

I ache from my hands down to my feet,

But there is no pain to speak of,

Nothing fixed, physical to report.

I watch myself drift away in stages.

Each part grown restless or dismayed

Creeps off in the hour before dark rises,

And I am left remembering each part,

Its function and its place in my heart.

One day I’ll just be a picked-apart head

Contemplating life from a sturdy shelf

In some quasi-comic analogy of life,

Frozen by the technology of the age.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 3, 2020