Line Segments
I see them in the country road we took
into the limestone hills, above a mass
of purple rows outside the village Grasse,
and trace their path in every place I look:
the tartan spread, the marching ants, the brook
of bursting bubbles rising in each glass,
between our lips the blades of tender grass
that mark a page—our last unfinished book.
But now I see them in your hands and eyes
(the rays of sun, the feet of passing crows)
and there beneath your muslin dress, where lies
a line of skin, whose length some doctor knows,
then toast the day from this enduring sphere
where all these pointed ends might disappear.
by Gregory Palmerino
Editor’s note: The delicacy of the lines in this sonnet suggest the ephemerality of a life lived (but no regret).
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