poettok
the way back
Feather drifts in the paddock mist,
catches on a fence where the crow keeps watch,
slips past thistle and shadow‑fox,
rests by the lantern in the council’s glow —
and somewhere beyond the hill,
a glint waits for the hand that knows the way back.
life-arc
Life‑Arc Diptych
I. Townhouse Days — Looking Back
In the upper case,
a volume the colour of
late‑harvest light,
its spine breathing
salt and iron.
I keep it ajar —
not for dust,
but so the mapped water
can run beside
my own small channel,
each bend marked
in a hand I almost know.
Through the plaster,
a swell of brass‑warm air —
someone’s breath
caught in a long note,
turning the parlour
to water.
I did not rise,
only let the sound
find its own shelf
between the maps,
where it could lean
against a memory
I had not yet
admitted was mine.
Between the first assent
and the last,
a pressed leaf holds
streets I never walked;
in the hollow
where a page was long gone,
I’ve set a three‑part hinge:
motion, tether,
threshold.
It waits there,
not as ornament,
but as one more
voice in the palimpsest —
leaning into
the window I still
leave unlatched.
Hinge — Platform Light
Between the last stair
and the first step down,
I carry both airs —
brick‑warm and hay‑sweet —
in the same breath.
The train waits,
engine ticking like a clock
that belongs to neither house,
and I stand in its glow,
already partway gone,
already halfway home.
II. Homestead Nights — Looking Forward
The road out of the city
was a long exhale —
brick giving way to hedgerow,
hedgerow to open field.
By dusk, the air
tasted of cut grass and diesel,
and the porch light
was the only star
that didn’t blink.
In the kitchen,
boots left by the door
like commas in a sentence
I’d been writing all term.
Nights here were wide —
crickets stitching the dark,
the wind combing the wheat,
the barn’s slow breath
settling into the rafters.
Come morning,
the rooster’s call
would fold me back
into the farm’s grammar,
but for now
I lay between two lives —
one lit by streetlamps,
one by the moon on tin —
and felt the tracks
still pulsing
under my skin.
.