The day the body of my good guitar begins to resemble the pinched lips of the symbol we all agree means eternity, arpeggio of tundra, I carry it out to my garage where the vagaries of weather and ambience will do it no good. Passing washers and wing nuts sorted into once-empty jars on the workbench I wonder, what if the ancient Atomists were right? What if each object is busy beaming streams of tiny images of itself in a bid to be seen by the black hole in someone’s unforgivably blue iris? As if endless equaled hopeful. Just in case I take the only picture of myself I’ve ever liked and bury it where no one will ever find it. I had the only copy. Afterwards, I hang the shovel back on the nail, above the carpenter’s level with its little swallowed-back bubble caught like a secret in its throat. It’s only ever asked a single question as if that’s all a firm grip on equilibrium is good for. Or maybe it’s a suggestion box with only one admonition: Look to the space where something is missing. Or perhaps there’s no good reason it’s also known as a spirit level. Sometimes you come out of the house to check on me, all blue-eyed and permanent. The problem is, whenever any three of the two of us get together, the walls loosen, porous as birds’ nests. The ax heads glint and clink. After you leave, I take garage door opener in hand, raise and lower the horizon, again and again, repeating aloud so that only I can hear, words beginning with ‘no’: nomadic, November, nocturne, north.