Elements

Take back control. Clean dishes,
straighten the sheets of your bed.
Small victories, at this point idols are
soulless: taps, cooker hobs, washing basket.
Things take on new light, the bath
fills with deep, heavy water. Candles
flicker, heart monitors, as if it all
might go this second closing the book.
Some go their whole self with no spiritual
interaction, ‘spiritual’ being some vital
energy falling out of them untapped,
unchecked. Yet here we go, loaded.
Looking through photographs you can
see it in the eyes of a child yet to learn
the world tenfold, full of dishes,
bed sheets, washing baskets, nihilists.
You can see it in wisdom passed over
by those gone from here but remaining,
everything with a pulse, chromosome.
Take back control. Don’t let it go too far.
Small things first: fork, cup, pillow case.
Straighten out the soulless before you begin
on yourself, this world is full of idle Gods
who’ll pull you down before you’ve wiped
the sleep from your eyes. When the guessing
of dreams is done and night is a horizontal
stone, the work begins to put back in place
what was neglected the day before. And
it’s a long road ahead, an old withered
bone. And it’s like the soul is searching
for concealment in all the elements, trying
so hard to be forgotten and often somewhere near.

David Ross Linklater is a poet from the Highlands. He is a graduate of the University of Glasgow’s Creative Writing MLitt. His pamphlet Black Box was published in February by Speculative Books. He lives and writes in Glasgow. You can follow him on Twitter: @DavidRossLinkla