Things appear, glow, suddenly vanish

                           

                                      by Marius Kociejowski

Heat and Light

      1

Things appear, glow, suddenly vanish.

A tree, for instance, can be so intense

It appears surrounded with dark light,

And just as the mind is trained to it

The prospect of certainty is yanked away,

A cut sapling gripped in the hand

And swung through air.

      2

The distant explosions of a star –

The boy and his magnifying glass

Could set this whole scene ablaze.

The trees drop their leaves prematurely.

The path each leaf flows in motionless air

Is skilled by shape and weight,

In this stillness is itself wind.

A bucket is slung over a fence-post,

Its bottom a lacework of thinning rust.

      3

The proximity of each object,

How each outshadows or is outshadowed

By its neighbor or else stands alone

           in exacting light –

There is no chronology.

The luminous signals are spread

Flat against the surface of memory,

As stars are discerned

Only by their brightness.

      4

In the cracked geometry of the field,

A grasshopper climbs a dead stalk.

      5

An empty bucket set

To rust on a fence-post –

That which extended the meaning of a river

Is a dead tunnel,

Holds nothing

But the bitter heat of intention

Soured by neglect.

The clanging emblems burn in mid air.

Marius Kociejowski, So Dance the Lords of Language, 2003.