Reflecting (#2)

Picture the white gloves / blurred     — and tracings
the air became     — since

Pittsburgh asked for it     — arranged for these songs
/ these signatures     — and think

of the ways we heard them first     — how we hear
their teacher's passions in the singing —

not that we could have known      / or made so much
of such horizons     / imagined

the gloves surrendering     — released by the songs
for pleasure's sheer transparency     — so

that the moon stands full on the blue rim of the century —
surrounded by stars Elizabeth —

looks down on the traffic and down on the tiered lights
of stadiums.  And so we are driving afterward —

feeling this moonlight after all      — falling on posts
and timbers here     — over these shadowy stalls

where no beast's slept for years     / maybe for decades —
exposed by the buyers now —

because they need the wood basements and  for parlors
/ because it's another universe

new money would dismantle     — and only illusion
this afternoon     / this barn that I see

take on the shadows for its substance     — as the large sun
dips behind the ridge-line in my rear-view —

after this week between     — this silence so ready —
but overwhelmed by reddening and failure

/ with spinning my wheels in place     — moved
by this vaguest sense of all I might be doing —

but     — try as I might     — I fail to     — working
my heart through old and more diminished

precedents     — seeking for light     / your light
to show back to the world     — matching

the light with pieces of the light
and confidence.

 

© Appetite (2)