An expression is when you say something
But you actually don't really mean it, said
Daughter to friend in the car on the way
To another day of kindergarten. Close
Enough. Things shift. A carapace
Forms from every bloodied bit of skin
And pulls away eventually. Once, we meant
More or less what we thought words meant,
Then the whole shell of the phrase stiffened
And pretty soon it was a leathery token
Being tossed around, an expression.
Happened again and again, sometimes
By contraction, sometimes by extension.
Take place away from placeholder, which
Could be any kind of bookmark, thing to sign
A pause in process. By analogy, make a new
Term, timeholder. As a placeholder tries
To indicate a caesura in an action to be
Continued, rather than simply a place per se,
So a timeholder could be the magical
Reverse, a gap in actual space, rather than
Simply a moment per se. I parked
On the rutted road, the side grasses lightly
Littered with occasional cans and bags,
The trucks chuntering on some project up
In the distance, the odd ATV or dirt bike
Roaring through the scrub nearby, the sky
Blue high, hazed with fine spring dust
And mixed with pollen closer to the ground.
I got out to listen to the dwindling
Stream meandering below me. It hummed
Universal law, one presumed, liquid
Surface tension insufficient to keep
The water from sliding in snaking coils
Down the geometry of gravity. Fair
Enough. I tried to imagined an actual gap
In things, a way to mark, to save my time
Right when I left it, but I could not do it
Because the thin skin of my thoughts
Kept tearing away from the healing wound
They sealed for me. When was it I stopped
Being here and became somewhere, not
Counting this? It was just an expression.
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