Like a doddering funambulist
this poem tightrope-walks
to the edge of a plank
and totters there
with widened eyes.

Have I not made everything right?

Not quite: Return to the salt.

Who will write
a valediction
for this quivering poem?
A loss of words
that smack of nothing.

See the cat hunched in a tree
beneath an icy moon?
Yet another metaphor
for time-sanded lines
and yes –
the fireman is late
in getting there.

Come closer, please.

I am more than a coagulum
of dried blood and silent fingers.
There was meaning here.
Far too much of it.