in the dark, where desires grow devious,
I kneel by my window under stars like
the tiny teeth of a seaserpent,
wondering how best to know my life
& the silence furthers, the night full of
ambient luster
the stealth of inner self we may not know,
I concede to The Other :
the sprucewood that lends itself
to the creek’s waters
rimmed with the yellow days of summer
(their hours turn inwards, every past
memory of its wandering)
primitive as Golgotha,
everything is equal
having been gathered from the same
dark rib of thought
I am nothing that has not been had before
precarious radiance frames the skylit world,
the balance of night that shines in the cedar,
the winter-vetch, the redreeds
earth’s great labor, its cloak of injuries
our mother’s loathsome & handsome hours
how one cannot know another completely
how this is beautiful,
and lonely only if you let it
(we keep the final descent within us). -smakka–bagms
