In the time of two breaths
there’s the twilight sweet spot
when everything hovers
between color and not.
White becomes silver
as shadows unfurl,
or maybe it’s pewter
or mother-of-pearl;
reds turn to velvet
with lavender nap,
blues, cupric sulfate,
with diamond wrap.
Yellows to brass
with gold overlays,
burnished in hot coal,
smoldering blaze.
And a palette is born
each day at its end
that no words can capture
but only pretend.
Every day
the sun gets old,
enfeebled, dwindling,
softens hold
and quits the world
with liquid light,
deferring to silver
suns of night.
One
pierces the twilight
with incorrigible song
defiant
in the face of night.
A ponderous tired sun
pauses
in stately descent
to anoint the singer
with gold.
How like Venus,
with wisp of night cloud,
twiggy veil,
rising, unbowed,
daring the eye to see,
the word to say
what some Olympus
has made of clay.
Did you see it, dear reader?
What a wonder!
Grandma’s kitchen clock
ticked crisply like a snare drum,
by day blended in the rhythm of work,
by night echoed
through the bedded house
while the rite of springs squeaked under me,
percussive, brassy,
objecting, it seemed,
to my child’s weight.
A bare light bulb
dangling on thick black cord
hovered
over the bed,
beyond my reach
even when I stood
jiggle-kneed
on the jello mattress.
Grandma reached up
and turned it off herself,
then slipper-padded out.
Her bedroom a whole dining room
and kitchen away,
sly-eyed shadows deepened
around me
in borrowed bed
where once my aunts were little girls.
In the sleep breath of her house,
Ivory soap.
Now, as COVID blurs days into nights,
and nights into days,
my clock ticks crisply like a snare drum.
Comes now night’s black broom,
sweeping citric glow
over earth’s long arc
into some tomorrow.
Two planets meet the while
in astronomical collusion,
appearing in a oneness
of ballyhooed illusion.
It isn’t the conjunction but
the difference that’s grand
between what we can see
and what we understand.
Thanks and congratulations on capturing the Conjunction to S.W. Berg.
My apologies, dear reader:
the Conjunction faded in the transfer
to my blog. I hope you can see it!
Although this post is coincidence,
I cannot help noting this is Little Christmas.
The tradition of the star may not be universal
but human searching surely is.
Moonpath,
silk road,
where some fragment of soul
follows the bright water,
trading calumny of day
for the horizon
of a lavender night
and pillow’d dreams.
With more thanks to photographer S.W. Berg,
and with wishes that my tired country
can find peace within itself.
If I breathe,
will I hurt the air,
will I break the moon,
shatter, tear
this moment
frail, silvern,
when crickets whisper
Chopin nocturne?
From a purpling east
in pompadoured peach
toward twilight sun
they’ll never reach —
no matter: in beauty
airy, narcotic
they revel in being
purely quixotic.
In song to the moon
at end of day
Robin chirps
his roundelay,
the lyrics rising
plaintively:
What fools, what fools
these mortals be!
OK, dear reader, not all. Not all.
Thanks to Shakespeare for his ever-timely words,
and thanks to Robin for holding still.
