Tag: black and white

Phototaxis

The buildings remind me of splayed fingers.

Evening seeps between them,
staining the asphalt, though much of it
still tries to rise — coral blushing peach,
cooling to lavender, then smoke,

a haloed dome above,
then nothing,

or the illusion of nothing:
our minds supplying
the celestial forms
we remember seeing at night.

And with night,
low-pressure sodium vapor
arrests the compound eye.

Wing scales blur
the distance between street and lamp,
straining toward what
will never turn back:

Apollo toward Daphne,
Sköll toward the sun,
Hati toward the moon —

hungry.

Star Under Cloth

And sometimes—
when ritual hush fell like snow
and the air thickened with older names,
when gestures turned like keys
in locks I could not see—
I felt each soul as a star kept under cloth,
each life a fire sworn to its orbit;
and I knew the terrible tenderness of it:
not all stars are kind,
yet all must burn true.

So you made a temple of me, O light—
not of marble,
but of measured hours and reined desire,
of mercy laid as mortar,
of truth squared to the tongue,
of love obedient to will.
And because you built, you exposed—
for temples gather dust as surely as cottages.
The brighter the lamp, the clearer the dust.
So I sweep, and let the lamp judge.

The Lamp and Ashes V

I no longer ask for flattery.
I do not ask for ease.
Only remain—
keep your clear gaze
on the patterned floor of my days,
on the breath that rises and falls,
on the narrow hinge where I decide.

Set your eye in the flame,
not to burn, but to reveal.
Draw your circle round my hunger
until wildness learns its key,
until want inclines to ought,
until base metal remembers light.

And when I fall—
for dust obeys its law—
grant me the plain strength to stand and sweep,
to strike the line true;
to lift the bent, shelter the battered,
restore the lost to their own face;
to guard the small with law,
to choose the quiet good over noise,
to set one small flame against the dark.

This is enchantment stripped of spectacle:
not a word flung once into air,
but a life spoken in rooms of habit,
a vow kept among dust and dishes,
a green blade through ash—
The brighter the lamp, the clearer the dust.
So I sweep, and let the lamp judge.