Poem: Palpable in the Moments Between, April 2023

There are hallways here where no footsteps fall

(Do they exist, unobserved? unremarked?)

Corridors, on whose boards the dust a pall

Rooms like empty ships, mem'ry disembarked

There are secret gardens who fallow lie

Whose rusted iron gates seal all within

The chamomile grows wild, self-sown, oxeye

Daisy amongst its sweeter-smelling kin

There are windows shuttered, obsolescing

And silences that stretch and reach and grow

'Til they too take root, their presence pressing

Tangibly, hands stanching time's ticking flow

It can be said that there is no decline

Only movement from one place to the next

But pose that question to the withered vine

The empty house, the deaccessioned text

April 2023 Erin Rehil

Photo courtesy of the artist. Taken 2014, MAO Livehouse, Xuhui District, Shanghai.