Time Is An Old Glossy Dust Jacket Poem by Mark Heathcote

That has vellum sheets all but come unglued
Carelessly, held in our hands
It's a book that feels, nearly pristine new.
Whose pages are like badly laundered-clothes?
With yellowing jaundice drizzly dampness —

And yet inky dry inky wet it touches me for one!
As though sweaty damp running amniotic fluids
Flowed within, those last few sweet vestiges —
'That smelt not of fresh milk. Maize or spring barley,
But the grave whiffs of winter knolled grasslands'.