The List Makers

What if I were on your list?
The next slippery rung on your ladder
another silver bead on your chain.

I could be a black bottle of wine
lying on the stone cellar floor beneath your house
wearing a raincoat of dust
laid out like a legion of body bags in a cavernous warehouse .

Or perhaps I am your next bullet point.
You in the heavy boots, jeans and black T-shirt.
Those dark green - watching from behind the shutters
of an elevated window - eyes fixing me in the crosshairs.

But here…let me save you some time.
A well place mine on the twelfth fairway
or a man-trap in the sand-trap by the ninth green
would seem a far simpler modus operandi.

And there is the roll call of all those who just vanished
like the frost on a sunlit field.
Those who allowed the tide to take them
or left in the normality of the moment and never returned.

Leaving not even a chalk silhouette
in the hallway, face down
just a few feet from the door.