Aidan Semmens

FROM AFAR


byline on the author photo
provides a place to start:
he pretty, monochrome
she a mystery merely a name
maybe Malay

slight hint of a distant
land of water, stilted homes

then there is a handwritten
inscription on the flyleaf
but that tells us nothing




the depths to which I
depths or heights
it was ever

these are extraordinary times we
— always they are, times, extraordinary
extratemporal

the sun setting quicker
tideline shifting
contours mobile on the map

call of curlew nocturnal




mildew & must
a suspicion
moisture of empire
has entered the pages