Crossing Nottingham

                                      In memory of Boo

The machinery was swift, unforgiving
There was no reprieve, no stay.

I stood on the lawn searching
the gray pavement for your paths.
But you were too light to leave any.
If I pulled up this hard road
and attenuated my instruments,
would I see the tracings
of your passagings there
in the exposed earth?
Take this way the markings would say.

Before you  was not a path.
After, an impression that keeps after me.
You picked yourself up
and put yourself down.
Over and over.

There is no report on you,
just the hard facts of memory
inside the soft, silent way
you negotiated yourself
through the still light
and the tumbling darkness.