not your touch but your absence
not your kiss but after
my cheek cooling
like the sun eclipsed re-emerging
the land gradually dawning
birds waking again.
not your breath but your perfume
just a trace — familiar, austere —
declines in the room
like a cloud moving away
the glare returning
colours bleached and bare.
not your words but the place
on the page erased
where a shadow remains
like a building emptied
or a statue burning
a space yet to be filled.
shirts, the torment of our sheets
your keys from the bowl
all these things, these you-things
like a door closing or a film
framed by a door of an empty house
the sound running down as we pull away.
the likenesses pile up
times when I mistake one thing for another
shadows for anime, windswept for blown back
the press of the tide for knowledge (of some sort)
hands waving hello for hands waving goodbye —
not your touch but your absence.
Image: Flannel Flowers (Actinotus helianthi ) c. 1900-1910 – from State Library of NSW Flickr .
And for your listening pleasure here’s Thomas Tallis’ (from mid to late 1500s) Mass for Four Voices – sung by Chapelle du Roi – as one youtuber put it “Sublime magnifique merci.”
Peter Frankis writes 
This is exquisite! Both the poem and the photograph.It is impossible to pick a favorite stanza or line as they are all superb and original and lovely.
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So glad you liked.
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Beautiful and aching. I particularly like the 2nd stanza. Very relaxing music to listen to while reading it again, with care.
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The the statue burning is disturbing and memorable.
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Wow, such remarkable poetry! I especially loved these few lines:
“not your words but the place
on the page erased
where a shadow remains…”
It’s so haunting in what it communicates. That lingering essence of what is remembered as left behind. Brilliantly penned and indeed so superb.
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Beautifully written Peter, the photographic and filmic negative spaces interwoven with the energetic and emotional ones read so well on their own and with the Mass of Four Voices.
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Thank you for this – the Mass is beautiful isn’t it?
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It truly is 🤗
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It’s hard to be liminal to what matters, as one tends to unmatter too. Aching is a bevelled emotion. I loved the Mass for Four Voices, though I suppose it should be prefatory to the poem, not peremptory.
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Bevelled indeed. Glad you enjoyed the Tallis piece.
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Absence and a deep sense of loss so artfully, honestly and deeply registered here, Peter.
Great write…
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This is achingly gorgeous! The emotion portrayed here is so palpable.
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In B & W film photography, the light we see on the negative is really what creates the dark. Perhaps it is true in relationships as well. Great Poem!
Dwight
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Masterful piece, Peter, full of sadness….”your keys from the bowl” is one of those details that anchors a poem…JIM
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Thanks Jim – I liked that image too.
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I enjoyed the structure that you built, “Not the…but the…” — it lends a knowingness to your words, gives them weight. ~peace, Jason
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Thanks Jason. Glad you liked.
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The mistaken waving hands in the penultimate line….Superb.
The whole piece is wowza!
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Your poem resonates with me, Peter, and made me tearful. A beautiful poem of loss. This stunning stanza reminds me of my mother and grandmother, whose perfume I still smell and I know they are still with me:
‘not your breath but your perfume
just a trace — familiar, austere —
declines in the room
like a cloud moving away
the glare returning
colours bleached and bare.’
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Deeply touched Kim. I’ve an old suitcase of my mother’s and her scent is still there after all these years.
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A huge sigh of contentment from me ……
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I always love to read a poem using negations, the connection to negative space in photography is excellent, whenever you describe something abstract (love, loss, faith… ) it’s so much easier to describe it by negations…
I remember we had a prompt on this a while back
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Wonderful, Peter–the negative space, the absence . . .
” the place
on the page erased”
I really like this poem.
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You capture so truthfully the feeling when someone is no longer there. New reality defined by what’s missing – a kiss’ profoundness, a perfume’s evanescence, a key’s banality. The complex sum of another life no longer entwined with ours.
Awestruck. Guru status, Peter.
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Thanks for your kind words Max – glad you liked it.
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lost love’s unbearable vacuum. there is no getting over it.
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