duhpursuit

from a distance the world appears
half illuminated, an asterisk
glancing the unlit shoulder,
a footnote of sun amending unseen
mountains and rivers, restless and hard
to measure without eating the arid
or sinking deep in the shifting
as solid makes its way to sand.

lightning, a lucid ricochet
that splits the sky in an instant,
provoked by the heavens and all
they inhabit, the silt of the unnamed,
veining black into blue and white,
scatters the soft lining of another evening.
the round heel of the moon
glimmers in the dusty pools
of someone’s basement,
gliding across deserts, oceans,
and living room carpets.

we grow tired of learning
to starve without staggering.
we want for what shines, what slides
full and naked, rippling tides,
startling the placid, precipitation
slipping the smile from the somnolent,
smothering the smell of dry facts,
the sad and the sated, science,
the ritual of allowing the other
to analyze the ancient.
even the experts, god,
cannot completely unmask
without turning off the lights.

tender, waxen, etched and worn, the ways
we’ve tried to burn, to warm the dark, soften,
yield the sole regret, return unknown
the solid, heartache, to a final lighted place.

all these depend on the leaving,
the angle of the sun, the moon, whether or not
good terms and willing allow them to pass, to pause,
offering a few the rare trick of light, the illusion
of a ring of flame, really two sovereign
coursing a measured space

to blaze a brilliant hour before the rest,
before the stolen are snipped, snuffed and blown,
until the ember still for a while on our lips,
pursing, pops and plummets, a sputtering tail,
until the last bright being flickers and fails,
a gray unwinding stretched thin, threading
is and was and may be, only once upon a time.

doesn’t like my old theme–a new one for you all.

This new year was bittersweet.