by Joe Lever

I find the words in some way different now
To how I left them – changed, as if one night
A room once known had been rewrought somehow,
Familiar but altered. No, not quite:

Home stayed as it was left – and I had changed
By increments and instants, now estranged
From words I know but do not feel are mine,
Some order of which I’m no longer part.
Unnerved, I put a little time apart
To reacquaint myself with every line.

Poems are prisms passing thoughts as light,
Refracting what they cannot hope to see
Preserved. Still, we pursue them that we might
Glimpse once their fullness ere they cease to be.