The Oblique Circle of the Button

A tiny disc of pearl or resin,
rolled away, its faithful thread gone by.
Perfect roundness, motionless medicine,
in a drawer’s silence, fragile and cruel.

It recalls the gestures, the fingers that held it,
the taut fabric, a boundary it created.
Small fortress where bindings were woven,
a bridge between open and closed, its life pulsed.

Now it lies, a spent star without constellation,
an opaque mirror of a sky that no longer sees.
Does it await perhaps a new, unknown pulse,
or accepts its being, small and naked.

In its pierced heart, the hole that once bound it,
an eternal scar from an ancient embrace.
Yet, in that void, its essence rises up,
an insignificant whole, an eternal space.