Part of childhood remains
buried under sandcastles.
You used to poach
grasshoppers with an old hairnet
until it caught strands
of cobwebs and would not let go.
Memories are but hearsay.
So is a sachet that used to contain
scented soaps. So is
every emotion, even your own.
Only by intuition you know anger,
awake, splinters like sleep’s
exoskeletons in the morning.
Under your window
spiderlings fiddle down
a rose stem after rain, so much at stake.
There you stand
lobbing a tennis ball, as sure
of gravity as of dusk
that shivers inshore, searching
for a glade to fathom
the rest of the forest against.