An orphaned night sky slumps into middle distance
mountains.
Ours to recover just to lose again, the world
spins rapidly toward dawn.
If life is the sum of throb & hunger, something sacred
& final being
held up to the light & shown, naked, for what it is,
we are ready to surrender
our sovereignty over what was never really ours. Let go
of that small forever
we’ve carried cupped in our hands like a dead bird, like a
silent conch shell. When we lean in close to listen,
there is no ocean, no sky, no clumps of dry paint. No echo.
No canvas.