One Atom Thick

Memory stretches only just
to the last draught I drank of silence.
Parcel string has been torn, but not cut,
and without getting melodramatic,
life is full these days, and rich.
And I wouldn't have it another way
but this,

this moment of repose, one atom thick
a halt in that endless spinning
of an iron and golden wheel
whose spokes bear flames
which are jumped at regular intervals.
Across the city the heavy bell, heard
once, only.

I haven't been Nowhere in ages.