Michael Rutherglen

About the radiant heart of the matter, valencies drift

Surely there are teeth so small. I have listened for their turning, this frail swell and fall like old blood yearning upwards through the skin of days. Slowly, I am learning their count, though numbers fray in me, and the loaded instants graft, coming always to the same tangle: the distant cry merging with the song at hand, the rain’s insistent opening in daylong dryness, the plain moon draining into dawn. And below it all, hewn from the pliant light of some Geneva noon, they spin time’s thrum. Stopped, I have bent my ears to them. I have become sound inside their years. Surely I have known the whole of grief and grace in gears.