Gareth

Pulled into the dark smoke of his voice, his
stories, the pinched flicker of his beautiful
battered cheek, sometimes the voice drags,
sometimes it clanks, sometimes it's hard to hear
it speak, sometimes it swims so smoothly to the
surface of the room, gliding, angelic, through
the ears and the heads up to the roof where it
swoops, circles, hovers like breath, then descends
so slowly, softly, deathly still, a smokey trill
in a burning bush, then the air clears, the wood
creaks, and you are felled with one big push.