blackeyesunrise

[ROUGH DRAFT]

mid april,
the last wind arrives from its forgotten country
beyond the undulating questions of the sea, carries
on jutted shoulders her glacial scent, tundras
and frail purple fragments; your memory of it
– at once heartbreaking and frightful –
is familiar, like an old friend who may have
betrayed you in a previous life.

these days
i am held aloft only by this wind, which is to say
nothing tangible: a junction where two pressures
lead into one or one diverges into two —
the shame of it comes later,
familiar as tropic fruits, their skins
lachrymose and bitter; but still
the wind finagles her entry.

high noon,
just past the sempiternal curvature of morning
these junctions manifest again,
devastatingly metaphorical: two paths into
disparate tunnels like tumors in a cliff –
you are haunted by your old life, as you walk,
as you bite into a pear — the frequency
of junctions disturbs you.

an ending
drone emits from the mountain’s manifold mouths;
shame is the afflatus of the little green
in an inhospitable land, what i lack,
what the morning withheld in its secret heart:
a traveler on a path into darkness, lost
perhaps doomed to exiguous light for
the remainder of his years.

on time
the tunnel swallows you whole, an unmedicated
pill exploding into foolishness: the burrows
are merely overpasses, the daylight
marred only by terrific shadows — yet
you are never certain until the light speaks,
fills you with luminescent relief, just how
much the passage will take.