Darkness and Light

Two poems of despair and hope

Sun dog over the beach at sunset

Waterfall

A heavy rain falls 
and drowns out the thoughts
consuming my mind. My tears, 
not wanting to be alone, fall
with the storm. All that liquid
leaving the sky, leaving my body
despite my best efforts. 

It’s impossible to cling to
water. There’s nothing to grasp,
nothing to hold on to. It runs
through my fingers, carves
canyons from the already-lined
corners of my eyes. It leaves
a trail of salt down the soft
surrender of my cheeks. 

I can’t drink enough water
to replace what I have lost. 
I could consume the whole of
the Floridan Aquifer, leaving
the limestone caves barren, and still
it would not be enough.
I could swallow fistfuls of salt,
but my tears would only use it as
fuel. The ocean is behind my eyes
and it wants to get out. How
can one body so frail contain another so vast? 
I never stood a chance. 

*

Parhelia

parhelia | noun | bright spots often tinged with color that appear on either side of the sun; also called sun dogs


Sometimes when the sun
meets the horizon, their coupling
creates a doubling, sun dog
parentheses around the sun’s
implications. Light cups
light, containing itself
in rainbow-tinged hands. 

One sun is real; the others
are illusion, but lying eyes
are not necessarily false. I look
to the sky, insatiable, I become
a drinker of light, ravished
by sun dog subtlety, as unable
to look away as light
is to become solid.

I am whole, with my soul
floating in the sky, wanting
to become part of the light motif
sung by faraway ice crystals
and flung toward the earth,
shimmering in insubstantiality.

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WEEKEND POTPOURRI:

• Currently on repeat:

• The Landscape Has No Doors by Lin Yi-Han, translated by Jenna Tang

• A(nother) poem:

NEVER MAY THE FRUIT BE PICKED

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

Never, never may the fruit be plucked from the bough
And gathered into barrels.
He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs.
Though the branches bend like reeds,
Though the ripe fruit splash in the grass or wrinkle on the tree,
He that would eat of love may bear away with him
Only what his belly can hold,
Nothing in the apron,
Nothing in the pockets.
Never, never may the fruit be gathered from the bough
And harvested in barrels.
The winter of love is a cellar of empty bins,
In an orchard soft with rot.