…there is remorse

it comes in waves that can be jumped

if the timing is good.

 

There is something else,

a kind of combat

against the relentless advance

of loose threads in the tapestry.

 

That man who stumbled into my path,

tripped by a loose thread, or thrown by a seizure,

we locked hands and eyes in the grand mal way.

 

I saw something, maybe. He saw something definitely.

Said so through hard, tired lips

as I wiped the spit from his chin.

 

My instinctive weakness to reach out

caught me by surprise,

breaking the vow to remain detached

made when I kissed the bride for last time.

 

The molecules of that encounter fell into the wind,

scattered, in the precise pattern that gravity maintains,

as if drawn by a cartographer, or cubist

 

-and so we are moved

by remorse, combat, gravity,

by seizures, weakness, and vows.