or how I keep thinking of nowhere
and meaning you
— spaces you might inhabit
as the light
inhabits doors
or windows
or the bright
membrane of yolk and milk
on the kitchen table —
the way a sound
— this music
or the owls’
nightlong to and fro
of lulls and cries —
rests in the mind for years
like a childhood dream
whatever remains unfinished:
the not-pursued
each glimmer on the cusp
of touch
or loss.
—John Burnside, from section III of “Blues” in The Asylum Dance (Jonathan Cape Poetry, 2009)
