See You in the Dark: Poems

Not Quite Gone

54 NOT QUITE GONE Remember the incredible shrinking man in the movie, how small and smaller, scarily wee he grows until his wife can cradle him in a cupped palm, and smaller still, till, with his tie askew and little shoes untied he marches down the garden path, into the tall grass, receding, receding, smaller and smaller he’ll get and yet . . . never quite gone, after all? After small, there’s always smaller, Zeno’s arrow forecasting the differential calculus. I always loved that arrow, never arriving, like the little man, never quite gone, mingling with microbes, living his microscopic life. I’ve sat for hours watching ice melt, craggy peaks shifting shape on the sill, tiny Rockies bored by the sun’s death rays. It takes time and more time till the last chip becomes a drop, a stain, yet not quite gone. Or think of soap shrinking in the hand. I chase it round the tub, capture the slippery sliver, cup it in my palm till it’s a glint. I like to coax the last drops out of bottles, hover over puddles narrowing from the outside in, till there’s just the dark blotch. 55 I have childhood friends who may be dead except in memory, slivers sliding off in the tall grass. Here I go too, thinning, wisping, liquefying, evaporating, but never quite gone, not yet. ...