Birthdays
Milestones on an open road,
the sun a brilliant discus
in hills above the highway.
Sensations of travel
aren't etched upon the psyche:
they figure as refractions
of time, as random frames
that the snapshooters snatch.
Their albums aren't in order;
nor are the markers. You could be
forever collecting images
and never recognise the route.
Which is why the white sky
never shifts. Departures
are figments of distance,
and birthdays merely measures
of who, not when we are:
standstills, moving backwards.