Causes

"We cannot compare a process with 'the passage
of time' - there is no such thing - but only
with another process"

1.
The surface gleams dully; I can
smell faint sharpness where the
fluids linger and the thin card
curls, is sticky still.
It's smooth and slightly cool;
it has to be held flat
against the page.

2.
It is a fragment. Of dimensions
two remain (a third sustains
the image, and the fourth is frozen).
Replacing memory - restoring, or
the bringing into being of
what would otherwise have no
existence - one particle of flow,
a harmony alone.

3.
The gleam of sun upon your skin
caught, shuttered, held and
now transformed; the salt of
silver blackened, scarred, and
later squeezed through prisms onto
thin and slightly sticky card.

4.
It serves to move me from
one frame into another.
There is rarely any reason
for the choice of moments -
there is rarely any
choice, in fact.
I steal your scattered
instants for my future use;
I search them out when
instants never seem enough.

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