Rob Yates is a British writer hailing from Essex. He is currently based in Charlottesville, where he is completing his MFA at the University of Virginia. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has had work appear via Agenda, Bodega, DMQ Review, Envoi, Flash Frog, SmokeLong Quarterly, and other literary magazines. Some of his writing can be found through www.rob-yates.co.uk.
Absence
I have never been absent in my life.
Once. I always was. Usually here.
My breath contains the carpet and the star
nearest our sun. (It probably has a name.)
Twin poles. I watch the birds and the boiling
water. I never cup the rain. Let nightfall
mist. I reach for a boat. My hands are red
in the snow. I plant a tree. It floats.
Its roots drip wide in the air, waiting
to catch a different kind of fire. Always
a sudden, hidden now. Even when stunned
it moves. Stillness is there
to live through
and every age is one
of fragments, shipyards, nets, micrologies,
the curling heights of night, tsunamic turns.
Can you hear it? Water, high as sky, the perfect cloud approaching.
And the lights are stepping out, one after the other,
like tipsy dinner guests, into a dark entire. They were briefly
of our world. They used to show us something
of our world, reflected. The wave is a black hole,
known by things that don’t appear, beyond.
The wave breathes in a direction. Or maybe somewhere else.
(I’m here.)
A turning. Falling motion. Failing leaves.
© Rob Yates