Poem

Illumination, To Everything Turn

Light is given out in unequal measures,
doled out hastily and without favor.
It is taken back sometimes just as quickly
as the setting sun or a final breath.

It screams through morning curtains,
cold, hungry, and wanting to be held,
sings with the sweetness of a mother’s caress,
and dances from windowsill to front porch steps.

The warm air holds its reflected glow,
sunning bicycles in the front yard,
burns red as a scraped-knee afternoon,
as driveway stones sweat in the humidity.

Serendipity is the cool kiss of evening,
while amber rays wink around tree branches.
It sifts through rusty back porch screens, and rests
with content like old lacquer on ladder-back chairs.

But the rising moon has a sad green glow,
shining through door cracks with a wave of dismay.
It washes cold around the footboard with deference,
and as the tide retreats back from where it came,
it settles on the skin like a froth of quilted lead.

in The Broad River Review 37 (Spring 2005) 71.