Eluding the bottle

You move so easily;
a granule of sand twirling in the froth of sea fingers,
or the gush of a cottony wind.

You are like silk and liquid stone,
forever churning;
like squinting lashes against smouldering sun.

You flow like there is soft, feathered music
fluttering in the air,
and your rippling bones know how to whisper back.

You can leave turmoil
in the wake of your gentle force;
a war of word not weapon.

You are but a moment;
the grand clunk of a second, against the cloak of corridors
absorbing every grumbling tock.

To hold you would be to touch
what we chase with ink and bow,
and feel the weight of every inspiration.

Yet you are gone before we can grasp you,
never to be captured, or corked
in an artist’s bottle.

And so you are pursued across page and canvas
and through the centuries we haunt you;
our grain of sand forever pulled back to the blue.