it’s old
before it reaches me
i’m told

the light
the day
the news
the conversation

there’s warmth though
and daylight hours are favourable
still dealing a life force
measured sometimes, in moments

and so
i make the fickleness last
etch notes in my journal
ignore life’s frailty
expand the impermanence
until i have possessed
the full day
calling it mine

as if it were mine to own

First published, ‘Friendly Street Anthology 42’ “Dream-Water Fragment”, 2018
Edited by Karl Cameron-Jackson and Ros Schulz
and then by ‘In Case Of Emergency Press’, “One Surviving Poem 1”,
2019 (AUS) edited by Howard Firkin.