Dash

‘I’m sitting behind the glass,

at rest, my own portrait’.

Thomas Transtromer

No coin in a slot, no peepshow.

No flash of white

light, no sticky smudged surface,

or four practised faces

slammed down a chute

but a collison of lasers.

Or, put it this way,

it’s raining behind your window ;

there;s usual morning traffic,

you can always make a dash for it;

you can stay just

like that soaking up reflected light

from rain, stealing a chase on

whatever makes a rainbow,

becoming, to an onlooker, more solid,

but nevertheless

perpetually absent