Smithereens Press Chapbooks The Sea Path by Ciarán O'Rourke | Page 42

a thousand hours
for your gun-dark gaze
to clamber
out of the stifled light
you’re wrapped inside,
and blink unphotographed,
near with words,
on the heat-forgiven sand.
A fly enters the room
in which these wishes writhe,
lights on the hand
that would grip time’s net
like this, and shake you
out of it, lithe with life.
For an instant, history
is an insect, caressing skin,
and what poetry there was
vanishes, in which you’d lift
your frantic cigarette
to mouth, and speak.
Learning from your reticence,
I know
that when this creature

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