Every day there is this miracle we despise.

The taut fabric of skin laced over our lusts
like a primal drum, slackens and wears day by day. Crumples.

Absorbs a handful of pathways,
like maps of missing places not believed in.

When hands and feet are chastened with hieroglyphs,
and stoney irises of eyes become glazed gems,

a milky layer of quartz refines the vision,
excluding the peripheral.

Top lips, too, can pucker, as if having tasted too many times
the bitter pith, but still savouring the bite.

Hair turns like leaves, and we are struck by the fragility
of what is underneath.

This is how it comes: like a paddock ripped and drilled
too many times.

The wind starts to sweep us off and away,
spinning separate molecules.

The erosion persists, puddling us away
in rainstroms.

Some pretty stones are churned up
in the furrowing

and kept in a box for strange children
on empty days.

Every day,
there is this miracle.