I am glad I don't have your portrait,
I am glad you're not locked inside
a bird-pawed pitcher's glazy tide
or a patinated statuette.

I am glad your blood does not
coagulate into a perpetual sunset
as you stretch your distant bronze hand,
too distinct, easy to forget.

As I watch myself drift
on the spine of a clock-scaled dragon
I would have to abandon you
imprisoned in an effigy,

but you did not sail away
in a boat of your hand or face,
just ceased to be sensed, to stay
in shapeless immediacy,

holding a flower that never blooms
or shrivels into death's paint brush,
tossing an apple that never falls
in a tangy autumn-leaved mesh.

This apple thrown to me
still draws its plummeting curve,
a rainbow in the plum-coloured sky
that peels and cleaves in half.