The You Of You Poem by Ivan Donn Carswell

It doesn’t go away – no shelter
from the emptiness; a pure
and empty space invades what
used to be

A presence that was here remains
in truth, evades the cleaning broom
as easily as air – dispersing in the
face of it

And yet it stays as cogent as a place
preserved – a fortitude of memories
a physicality exposed as
naked truth

Senses are seduced in echoes from
a past reduced to ashes spread and
hasty footprints traced through
nascent dust

But emptiness still grows when lust
consumes an empty eye for touch
and tooth and smell of it that
sadly fled

No sound can fill the space you
left so patently contused; without
the You of You this place
is badly deficit
5 August 2009, I. D. Carswell