For I Am Gone

Do not look for me, for I am gone.

I am the silent songs of birds, the words

Of ancient etchings scratched off warm stones.

The lone tumbleweed on open sands,

Spreading nothing more across vast lands

And crashing into sparse trees.

I am the breeze on the path that is left behind.

The vacant mind of an elderly man captured

In a photograph. I am the white edge,

The ledge of a precipice above an empty sea.

An unease of lost origin, drifting aimlessly

Through opaque skies. I am virginity.

I am the lies that are never told,

The arthritic ache of a child

That never grows old. I am the folds in the earth,

The wall at the end of the universe.

I am the moment between now and never,

The eternal forever before it begins.

A spinning of stillness, unthinkable thoughts,
The unbreakable part of the atom
And the fathoms of gravity left by the majesty 
Of a dying sun, undone.

I am the nothing between turning pages,

The ages of stopped time; not rhyme or reason.
I am a treason, uncommitted, the pitted marks
On a flawless star. A grain of the world unscarred.

I am everything that is no longer there,

And I am everywhere, and always will be. 
But do not look for me,

For I am gone.

Copyright © 2012 by Simon Austin