A Single Page

With a single page to write on,

what’s to say?

Ten thousand things cannot be named.

Review the history:

you went out early in your life,

heard only snatches of the conversation,

and could not believe most things they said.

You went along with all the talk,

and nodded as you listened.

Nobody would ask you much about yourself,

and that was cool.

It was fairly quiet in the middle years,

and almost easy just to disappear,

to fold the tents of your big ears

and hang about the fringes in your slippers,

asking little of the world except

soft breezes, maybe susurration.

But a wild-ass wind shook all things loose,

your hair and shingles, shutters;

lids blew off the barrels in the yard

as winter showed you its hard face,

its sharp-toothed stare.

At times you wanted to despair,

yet what goes round comes round again.

Thermodynamics rescued you:

God knows that nothing’s ever lost

that once was found.

You believe this now,

and many pages would add little

to what can be said within these margins:

borderless, unbound.