Tim Barlow Writes

Welcome to my short stories, poems and other ramblings


Zen Garden

Don’t come looking for me if you want to be mourned; 
With funereal black I will not be adorned. 
You’re no longer here, you’re excused, you are pardoned; 
You’re the space between rocks in a Japanese garden. 

You’re part of the nothing that separates things, 
The silence in rooms when no telephone rings. 
You’re the night we can’t see on the far side of earth, 
A pause in the dark between death and rebirth. 

You’re an absence of action, half-time at the match,
An itching sensation that’s not worth a scratch; 
The space on an org chart between boss and minions, 
The gulf that’s between our conflicting opinions. 

You’re the point on the dial between lukewarm and cold, 
You’re no longer alive, so you’ll never grow old. 
You’re No Man’s Land in the First World War,
The milk that was spilt and the crying no more.

You’re the sliver of time from the tick to the tock 
When the hands click together at twelve of the clock. 
You’re the space that comes hard on the heels of full stops, 
The gaps in the storm between falling raindrops. 

There’s no more to venture, nothing to gain; 
You’re the transient bubbles in dodgy champagne. 
You’re the pause between verses, the carriage return, 
The frostbite so cold that it feels like a burn. 

You’re the dry dead leaves on branches unshaken, 
The path in the yellowing forest untaken; 
The tree that falls down with nobody around 
In the midnight wood, and makes not a sound. 

You’re a negative now, you don’t anti-matter. 
Your atoms can split and your molecules scatter.
You’re the cold, dead heart of a distant red dwarf 
The wake of a ship that’s long left its wharf,  

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