No one is alone:
the pale, pale moon of morning
offered to us all.
(August 16, 2020)
Communion Wafer
Tag: poetry
Light Erases Shadow
The sun sits still, yet moves
perpetually to a new horizon,
a new dawn; this world
moves with us, always here.
Inevitably, moment to moment,
color extracts from shadow,
as morning, refuses definition,
and pushes back night’s advances.
A prismatic god unfolds
around us as you speak; words
divide to nuance and variant,
until blinded, we turn away.
Too much light erases shadow;
we’re defined by what we are not.
(August 4, 2019)
Agoraphobia
Outside,
the trees and bushes seem
to vibrate in the bright heat;
as if any moment, they’ll collapse
into their own shade, exhausted.
*
Inside,
they are framed in the window.
I watch them from across the room
from the chair I’m sitting in.
I am cold in the conditioned air.
*
August
has begun. Soon, I’ll be back
at work, teaching my students
to find meaning in the mundane
details which often overwhelm us.
(August 3, 2019)
Exposure
Another layer’s stripped
away, as through attrition,
until the grain of my skin
bleeds through, a botched tattoo.
Randomly, I pick a book
off the shelf and read notes
from decades ago I left
in the margins, and wonder:
who was I then to write
myself into a text so poorly;
while knowing, I am
no different now.
I am nude on a stair,
descending into myself.
Patchwork
I find a narrative,
as I age, hard
to patch together.
I cannot mend
all that I have
rendered, all
I have misplaced
in anger, and neglect.
I have no prologue
to explain succinctly
each switchback
I have turned along.
It’s easier to see
a moment without a past;
easier to mind the flower
as a petal first falls.
What scars I have
are well hid; no
stars to weave
a pattern in the sky.
(July 31, 2019)
the decay
Bit by bit,
he felt it:
his belief,
his life–
fall away.
He was worn,
frayed, but
no longer just
along his edges;
Like mouths
tangled in
unvoiced lies,
large rifts
opened,
and he was
devoured.
No one was
left to watch
for the last
wet-blooded thud
in the dirt.
(July 31, 2019)
Hidden in the Calligraphy
Yielding more
than simple correspondences,
or letters marked in a ledger,
words bend fields
through which we see
distortions and clarities
reflected like sunlight
in a waterfall’s spume.
they reveal and cloak
certainties in our unease
with what we should believe
as true, and what we know
to be a lie as we speak.
(July 29, 2019)
