GONE

a painted hollow
beneath an eye
whose arc has ribboned
streaks into dawn's smudge

arrayed for my
stencilled programme
built from blood's
ceaseless river, dividing,

forking faces from ashes
sown by her hand and fingers
unfanned in a gesture uncannily
similar to a languid goodbye

catches my gaze and in the mixture
of contrasting lights, disappears,
death of a shadow,
revealing the tracks

of a phantom crow
long gone flown, having
willed a dark glint only
in the contracting pupil

headstone left,
a grave marker of memories
crushed to a pinpoint,
now blinded in the dark

it is drowning in,
now surging open to embrace
the last shreds of dream
fired back as final echo