PHILOSOPHY

Stuff keeps dropping down the crack,
into a dark abyss of black
nothingness, where it rots and splits
in decay, leaving only bits
of matter, and images that haunt
the niche behind my eyes, and taunt
me with forms I recognize, but
cannot reach.

I have in mind the gap between
my boiler and my stove, which seems
to lay in wait for unsuspecting
prey, ready to gobble up each thing
that strays, unbalanced, from my grasp,
a noun in decline, where fast
it joins forms predestined to
become unknown.

It was a sausage, cooked and fat
that fell most recent down the crack,
over the edge and through the grid,
like a burial at sea it slid
into the deep, where now it finds
its rest, and what it leaves behind
is pure geometry,
thought, at its best.

Jane Sharp 8 March 94
Edited April 2010