Twilight curtains parted
and in grand purple theater
arose a ponderous butterscotch moon.
“Catch me if you can!”
it stage-whispered to my camera,
which sighed in my hands,
and tried, oh, so many times,
noble machine,
but in the end could only stand with me,
groundlings both,
in awed suspension of disbelief.
You may ask, dear reader, if there is anything
that doesn’t remind me of dessert.
I’ve asked that too.
Last night I flipped the light switch in an upstairs bedroom and the whole house went dark. I asked every homeowner’s favorite question: now what? Then lights back on. Then off. On. Off. Off…off…
I found myself in a world of India ink. Not a glimmer, not the tiniest shard of light. Groping is a graceless ballet, but just so did I find the stairs, the banister, and warily make my way down. Why, you may ask, did I not think to grab the flashlight that’s upstairs? Because it’s me.
Bumping along, I looked out the front windows. A world without light. Disorienting, unsettling. As I inched through the house, a timid glow startled me. My battery candles! Beacons! My feet steadied immediately, and I made it to the back door, next to my shadowy Christmas tree. The houses across the pond were black. Not a light anywhere. It was as though every person in the world was gone but me.
A lightless world is an empty world.
The power company did me the courtesy of calling to tell me there was a power outage. Really?
Why are the robots never programmed to tell the customer what happened? So far as I could tell, I flipped the switch in an upstairs bedroom and shut down a small city.
How oppressive that solid, unforgiving darkness. What a slamming shut of life. Our fears are never far from us, are they?
Who said the moon is cheese?
Why, anyone can see
the moon is made of paper,
thick and cottony.
Someone tore it gently
in swooping deckled arc,
sculpting it to give me
a wink against the dark.
Dear reader,
This is not the perfect photo
about which I can boast;
the window I took aim through
added flourish of moon ghost.
But nighttime in the winter
I prefer being warm to bold;
it isn’t only dark out there,
it’s finger-nipping cold!
This is another one that, despite its length, makes me want to append “Burma-Shave!”
When winter moon laughs,
the sky shimmers
like sequined cloth,
and the trees reach
their paper leaves
to touch the spangles,
and the laughter bubbles
downward
to distant lacy roots.
And then one day
the tree,
filled with moon fizz,
explodes in green.
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.
Oddments 