The Night Absences

      The stars drop
      Thin and sinister as pins
      Into the silver skin, the skin
      The skin of lions
5     Skins of seals
      Peeled back bleedingly,
      A washed eyeball, after the thumb
      And water have come
      With their pressure of good wishes;
10    The wet skins
      Shed silk bloods, I-dots
      That spatter the dry concrete
      So appealingly!
      Such pure dark washes of dropped blood---
15    Pure as the clean
      Simple things you say to me.
      Night's absences
      Recede
      And dawn breathes
20    Blue and new as a bruise
      In the vacant east.
      Strange, isn't it,
      How you and I
      Were each
25    Born with a mouth to pronounce death with?

 

From the collection "Contemporaries"

Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]

More information available on gregglory.com.