the fifth season
— four seasons are as it were a kind of given —
a familiar temperate providence taken for granted
like the thin bread and wine of all good things
that sooner or later make their way onto the plate
of the next congenial meal — fields perhaps
where one can graze a resurrection on
— what if instead — a single season that trespasses
an oblivion that condemns the soul to its own ecstasy
— or a fifth perhaps that casts the faceting of sand
over the desert scent of night-blooming cereus
sifting the paradigm of chaos just enough
forcing the peaks of the sierra dead of summer
to settle out the squalls of snow blowing sheer curls
of back-lit cirrus to the blanched sands of the moon
white light
— obscured even in clear air filtering the singularity of spruce
from stands of apple — details absorbing and reflecting parts of light
— late day in winter — under the slant of sun — white light shines
a tentative sensitivity — remnants of it at best visible at a given time
— it’s after staring across the facets of the surface glare
into the blindness of the dying shadows — that lets white light
the little there is shine through the onset darkening — it takes
the depth of night to rest its still intensity on the intense stillness
of snow on fields — that so moves with the light — on the light
in the light — to the light — where the past light of its future coordinates
bolts from a startled browse fleeing across the line of sight into the shaken
tangle of a windbreak — lost to some more remote unknown terrain
— a light seen nonetheless if only by a cold eye letting it dilate its iris
to concentrate a retina burnt on its source — always at hand
— no matter where — if it is — not here — and it is — not there
