After Reading Derrida

How to understand the sound of a rifle shot
Darkness. For some moment
standing, staring at shape
cast in casement
superimposed onto land
what seeing, what has carved out
approximation of meaning
a sign

In that chora, a shot

Now rain sudden, saddening
closing off rifle-holder
from signified-in-transit

How to leave a valley
a will not to be not
seeing this again and again
how leaving is desire
hollows, makes physical the signified

the way the mist trails vertically
and the rain bank
backdrops valley edge
sky’s littoral

cars wait at the bridge
process over studded logs
climb a damp sky
road, as text, crumbled at its edge

© Anna Kerdijk Nicholson 2012