sunlight
photograph by james cater, 2019
how do we know
when it is done?
says the little
writer in me.
and
the response
i get
so full
of fret
is that
of course
it never is.
so i sit in the parks
watching the pigeons
peck and puzzle
over abandoned boxes
of cold, oily chips;
watch as half thought
winds
map the jitters
of angry leaves
throwing oscillating
shadows
over tear-drop
ponds;
watch the sweat
crest a knuckle,
descend a forefinger,
bloom upon
a thumb so
caked with earth
that forgotten
gardens are in
awe of me.
sunlight. sunlight. heat thumping in my temples.
and sometimes
while i drink and smoke
and talk of beautiful women
and men so mad with envy
and loving and self-loathing,
so beautiful in their own self-right,
muscular, taut, antithesis of weakness;
things proposed in fiction, purely,
in their naked innocence,
sunlight in their ego
sunlight in their idiocy
sunlight in their tragic self pursuit,
then
i get to thinking
i cannot write,
the poems are too big,
the people are too real,
the city and the parks and the waterways, the shadows of trees moving past me,
and even the damn pigeons, so clucky and cunning and confused,
singing, singing
foolishly
of the sunlight raining
through the holes
in my shoes
and the dance
of the toes
ready to go
and the movements
of things
i cannot possibly know
except that
sunlight illuminates
us all
and steals us from the stories
of the night.
and if i can
pinpoint
a tickling
armpit,
or a sapling surrendered
to the roots growing inward,
or a magnanimous, magnificent
moment
where the sunlight primely
distorts into being
the abrupt simplicity
of a high-speed collision,
the elegance
of a paw of smoke
and the immense strength
of winter’s cloud
rising in shades of lilac,
well then,
ofcourse,
my voice
is always
thinking.
this poetry
put simply
is overwhelming.
but
on occasion
rare as they might be
today perhaps, tomorrow almost certainly,
there is a sweet and dire connection
between the writer and the wordless.
for when i cannot say it straight
it comes like hapless poetry,
the sunlight thrumming through me.
