The ice changes its colors
            depending on whatever leaves or
            enters its body. The light changes

            its texture depending on whatever
            takes or touches its mind. The angels
            above slip their hands in the pockets

            of a branching rose. The sky is round
            and empty, a kiss remembered without
            a face. Then a cloud, like breaking bread,

            or sudden waking in the open air,
            Brings a holy day of obligation,
            an ache that is better than memory

            Or common sense, which one does
            without. Watching rain fall: one drop
            the end of a thousand year day, the next

            the beginning of another, the horizonless
            sky weighing on absent thunder,
            forcing even trees to lean and shift,

            taking the breeze with a deeper
            timbre, the way tired women lean into
            a note and become a choir…

            You can let go of anything but
            paradox, as I can hold onto nothing
            but certainty, its abstract surface over

            which you glide, hands free, not
            light but the memory of light
            losing itself in the gravity of water,

            its binding or unbinding silk,
            Its clock cinches and sudden clarity,
            As slap-happy as bar wine.

            The lilac, a child of ice and light,
            A memory of both and neither,
            A slight god, bows only to desire.

            Lilac Sunday. Honeysuckle faith.
            I’ll remember come Labor Day
            What comes of spice and color.


Copyright © Christopher Moylan, 2005. All Rights Reserved.