Lazy light scatters across the sky,
through the branches and their spreading leaves;
A thoughtless echo, bent to a reverberating cry,
dares its way through willful shadow.
Now and then the dust remembers
what was once taken so easily for granted,
while an unsung witness, questioning why, granted
no answers from a pitiless sky,
granted no haven from all she remembers
of lives left behind in mad rushes through doors, leaves
the stillness of another kind, another shadow
mixed with hers, assorted doubts entangled in their dawn and her promise not to cry.
Delicately stepping around twilit shards whose reflections cry
for recognition, a secret stowed in hazy depths, holding its breath until granted
cherished release, caresses the air in a split-second embrace before evaporating back into shadow.
What’s amazing is how the floor can look like a sky
made out of things you’ve dropped, obscured by leaves
of discarded clothes and inconveniences no one remembers.
But who wants to think about that? Especially if no one remembers
anyway. That’s all in the past. No reason to cry
about it, no reason to dwell on orange and brown leaves
of meaningless descent, of blue-green wishes never granted,
of panoramic vistas taped to the sky,
or anything, really, when you know it all eventually fades into shadow.
Maybe there’s a place, though, where unrest becomes its own shadow,
where all those things we’ve dropped align, where someone remembers
why the keys are on the floor, why the leaves are on the ground and not the sky,
why our memories go backward instead of straight ahead, why people cry
when they’re happy and when they’re not, why we’ve been granted
cherished release but continue to hold our breath, why she never says goodbye before she leaves.
At the back of the book, among the untouched leaves,
an appendix details what the main text left in shadow.
For those so inclined, access has been granted
to an illuminating chapter which, as the author remembers,
differs drastically from what came before, a far cry
from his early work – mostly depressing, haunting, cynical stuff, filled with too many clouds and not enough sky.
nightopia 