Time, Place And Absence Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

As the world is closed and bounded,
The new world beckons -
And our place is both free and captive
And absent.

There's a special anguish that writers have
About where the world stops and starts
Whether they are egoists for whom the world is small
Or introverts shrinking from the world at large

About whether they are pushing the boundaries
Or interrogating the encroachment of reality

And they talk into the space that stretches in front of them
Trying to find a seam, an edge - a horizon
That marks out their own experience or understanding
That defines a hinterland they can claim and settle
Or a homeland that can be made secure for sharing

This question of separation and its suffering
Is at the heart of things - in where things find a place.

And as for time, as Anna Akhmatova has commented:

‘As the future ripens in the past,
The past rots in the future' -

And the present is both sweet and tart
And tainted.