Sestina

 I have done it again with my return

Here, defacing another memory.

Blurred body fracturing a gem of light

That bursts against my skin, a glass bloom blown

Into incoherent murk. Captured time

We save that image endures, eternal

I transgress and am fixed in eternal,

Arrested motion. No hope to return

To make myself the scene a second time.

But I do. Imposturous memory

Eddies in city’s discarded loess, blown

Skywards to live in death, a ghost of light

Divided self – half particulate light –

Agitated photons in eternal

Foment, elating in Sun’s tailings. Blown

Out in arcing gouts; enacting return

To be remade on screen, as memory.

Imperfect, unlapsed record of that time

I crept into your frame. It was that time

You were taking a photograph, and light

Stained my face, mingling my memory

With yours. And I am caught in eternal

Half turn: curtain of hair; helpless return

To long lorn youth and hot, hard feeling blown

Like molten glass. Batavian tears blown

To silt the larynx of the world. In time

I will dredge the past from dumb throats; return

Reborn as image, impossibly light.

I will rise and fall in air, eternal,

And through dismissive cirrus my memory

Vibrates in waves that silent memory

Mouths along infinite vectors. Wind blown

Leaves clutch themselves and dance eternal

Rounds. I pass the peculiar Gothic light

Bound to buttressed stone, too scared to return.

Forgive my memory. It will, in time,

Be one more blown breath, a false aether light

Can bend to will its eternal return.