circumstantial hush of light,
as we are mid-afternoon and peripheral
to totality. the flies go mad against the glass
and the droning helicopter hovers much
the same, while the shadows form crescents
like fingernails and every light goes to sepia
and blue. who knows this unnatural haze,
this discoloration, quite as well as I do? every
summer afternoon feels cupped by the dismal
afterthought of the moon. black butterflies
caught in the alley war with the pristine streak
of seagulls at the edge of waters—never look
directly, darling, at what is gentle but surely
also burns the retina. oddity, rarity, temporary
alignment of these disparate sources of shadow
and light, as the heat curls off the concrete
all the composition smears. what melt, what mania
of life just outside the edge of radical darkness.
as the pupils sting, and the whole city goes silent,
nothing eclipses the sense of the end times ephemerally
arrived: apocalypse and revelation on our doorstep,
for this moment one and only, until the world slips
inexorably toward its tea-stained conclusion, quiet
and rushed by the panic of all that blurs and rises.