Just days after placing the book
on the shelf I run a finger across the cover
and leave a faint wake of darkness.
Dust, borne on the air currents:
ancient pollen, fugitive minerals
from the earth, pre-solar grains,
silts ground from the floor tiles
by centuries of incessant footfall,
even irons and silicates, the only
trace remains of burning meteorites
immolated at the end of unimaginable
journeys. And paper fibres
as if the pages of the book itself
are succumbing to entropy
which, of course, like all things,
they are, and shrouding
themselves. Structure must
dissipate, the dust says.
So here is a blizzard of dead cells
and fragments of nails. And particles
of skin and hair from the people
who lived in this house one hundred years
ago, and their ancestors too. And carbon
that once formed the eye of a bird
or the leaves of the ferns and horsetails
thriving deep in a primeval forest.
Hundreds of thousands of years.
Millions and millions of years.
Spinning. Spiralling. Drifting.
Motes containing traces of hydrogen
and lithium from the beginning
of everything tumbling
in the unstill air.
This eccentric inventory
of the unravelling universe
forms a spectral veil
which flows slowly
through these rooms
and if the daylight comes
in at the correct angle
I can see a spiral galaxy, a
supernova, a shooting star
burning to pieces as it
enters our atmosphere,
a halo.
BEN TUFNELL IS A CURATOR AND WRITER BASED IN LONDON. HIS POEMS HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED BY ANTHROPOCENE, ENTROPY, PANGYRUS, THE RIALTO, SHEARSMAN AND SMARTISH PACE, AMONGST OTHERS, AND ARE FEATURED IN A FORTHCOMING NINE PENS ANTHOLOGY ALONGSIDE JENNIE OWEN AND JEN FEROZE. HIS STORIES HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED BY CONJUNCTIONS, LITRO, NIGHTJAR PRESS, STORGY AND STRUCTO AND HE HAS BEEN LONGLISTED FOR THE BBC SHORT STORY AWARD AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE SOCIETY OF AUTHORS’ ALCS TOM-GALLON TRUST AWARD. HIS DEBUT NOVEL, THE NORTH SHORE, IS PUBLISHED B FLEET (LITTLE BROWN).