Karine Leger, Dancing Sky (acrylic on canvas), 48x40 in
It’s not so much
that light leaves
as that dark affixes.
First the bunched green
needles of the Ponderosa
beyond my window
hashmark flat
black. Next,
the neighbors’ red
door oxbloods,
thickens to the color
of absence,
fingery rhodoendrons
stationed like cut-out
sentries at either side.
Dark darts
through the sky’s
grey glut of clouds,
pulled to every
tree & plant
& made thing
like powdered
iron to a magnetic
pole. & only when shadow
owns all that has shape
below the heavens
does it seep back
to blue the air
that shade of deep
ocean just before
creatures give up
on eyes. Dark doesn’t
fall. It completes.
A mercy, considering
how full-spectrum
the day you folded
like a dropped towel
while stepping
out of the shower.
How artless the sun
through the bathroom
window as your lover
caught a cab home
from work—
& so we arrive,
as every poem
does lately—
to find he couldn’t
hold you—
each poem begins
believing there’s something
to be said about
night, or the trees—