The Clamour

The clamour is always just a thought away,

one wrong turning of the mind. I hear the cries

(they’re mine) at the foot of a stair,

the end of a supermarket aisle,

and then it washes over in a tide of loss. All

gives way to chaos, or to what is always there:

that locked-out self that treads its mill of grief

waiting for her dying to die down.