George Franklin

The Frame

Courtesy of the poet

The tops of the trees stream
As though through a denser element
But slower than in real time,
In the tempo of departure, of mourning.

And you, on your back,
Look up at them through high glass
As a familiar sensation returns,
The beginning of an elegy without words.

You lie at the threshold
Of sleep with no talent for sleeping
But with an instinct, instead,
For receding into the current of attention

Impersonal, that disowns you
Even as it works through you to no end;

Its joy subsists without you.
You are baptized in absence instead.

Still, how exquisite it is,
That tethered rushing of silver green
Rampant against a cloudless sky ­
A vision the light frames to know itself by.

You cannot remember the day
You first stepped from the frame. Not even
The current can carry you back.
And yet now as always you cannot forget

The fate of the earliest witness
Still borne within you from time out of mind -
The sensation of seeing too clearly,
The desolate knowledge of not being seen.