Lost Property
If I stepped out on the premise that dogs,
Worth watching for their sprightly wordlessness,
Would not watch me, and that I could move
From street to street, the occasional tree,
Without comment, without doubt, honestly,
Could I then understand the compulsion
To be seen - the desire of Kings downwards?
When even the dogs do not see me pass
What nerves would conduct my liberation?
Would I suddenly hunger for the glances
That today pass over my tired shadow,
Or would invisibility release
Me from the burden of him, her, and it?
But this rhetoric does me no favours.
While I see in the bottle of my days
Such revisions to my solitude
I avoid the brittle truth alongside,
No more than than my reflection in brown glass.
My cloth, my crown, lie elsewhere, lost property.
And I choose to claim what the others leave.