Smithereens Press Chapbooks The Sea Path by Ciarán O'Rourke | Page 36

(ii)
No matter how orderly the world becomes,
which every minute hoarded in this house
has made chaotic, scatter-lifed, and true
to randomness, and no matter how quietly
your touch withdraws from book-sleeves,
cabinets, picture-frames, accedes to clearance
as the shelves dismantle anyway,
the windows start unlearning light,
right now I still am standing on the edge
of stillness – total, blameless, sweeping in –
and the basin in my arms, marked ‘Misc.’,
remains the core of all things here,
each sun-blotched photograph a heartbeat
this hesitation greatens to possess.

(iii)
Once the air remakes itself, and the walls resume
their wind-shunning, functional routines
without our bodies moving in-between, quietly
taking measure of resultant warmth, the life

30