Wiped
By Sam Wagan Watson
Published 19 June 2023
For Martin Harrison
“I sing the joy of wandering
and the pleasure of the wandering death …”
Guillaume Apollinaire
I replay your voice with every word I borrow from the dictionary,
again, and again, as it hits a page, embedded. And as the
words get harder your voice gets weaker in memory and I fear if
I keep writing, well …
You know what will happen?
Visions of the road become in my mind, journeys
we took, words you shared with me that I tried to pass to others,
in-kind. Acoustic resonance in our textual-scapes, lyrical tracks
and precious liner notes, that I hold close from being
consciously wiped …