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Tim Kindberg

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Blank heaven

My childhood home
is empty - its echoing hallway still
lit through the glass I cracked
with a stone; its bare steps always
finishing in key-fumbling darkness.

Through the door
persists a long-cooled chair,
the curtainless living room’s
broad desk, a pad’s blank page.
The blue feint lines
await forever more flows of my ink -
a language I was learning,
my struggle to learn a theorem,
a letter to my father.

Across the flat
is the kitchen that held him once.
Filling vessels from the yellow shelves
then turning his attention to
                              the burning stove:
thinking of feeding us, thinking
of leaving us; tossing
the smoking thoughts like pancakes.

I hear footsteps:
the staircase that carries me back down
carried him, guiding our twin motions,
both of us swallowed
like atoms of a rare light gas
diffusing from the house.

Space predominates, not just over
                                       my father and me,
but everywhere, subtly.
We move through the world
in its unspoken reach -
the low sky, the distances
between people and the street.

And there
is where someone has been,
somebody still with overcoat flying,
running through blank heaven without end.



Untitled illustration


Tim Kindberg lives in California where he designs and maintains Magma’s website.

Page(s) 58

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