KEEPING TIME
Her footfall like an afterthought
at the edge of your hearing
made you wonder how such a sound
could contain even a touch
of personality, the barest hint
of someone worth remembering.
The day held its light. The night at bay
it seemed for good, you marveled
from the safe distance you maintained
at how the heart’s rhythm, incessant
so long as we can know it, is heard
only when there is around us
some mimicry of its beating:
a clock’s tock sounding the depths
of an unfamiliar room; cicadas
scratching at dusk; this walking away
over dry stones; the breaths we count
alone in any breathless hour.
Lucas Jacob’s poetry and prose have appeared in journals including Southwest Review, Barrow Street, Hopkins Review, Western Humanities Review, Unsplendid, and Birmingham Poetry Review. His chapbook, A Hole in the Light, was published by Anchor & Plume Press in 2015. Jacob’s first full-length collection, a finalist for the Eyewear Publishing Beverly Prize, is forthcoming in 2019.
