There is a visitation of light
upon the bare wall, a perfect rectangle
of a picture of light. As you cross
to the ashtray your head turns god
and your eyes sear red. You could be one
of the devils in the corner
of Hieronymus Bosch’s Hell.
This is the September light that falls
piercing with its cooler edge, falls
through the loose clapboard of root cellars
and strikes upon a corner abandoned for a hundred years
but never by light.
It slants the kitchen table just so, tilting it,
trying to convince you you are on water.
And into the valley of this lonely cove
it slices the curved hills and seems for a second
to remember a glorious past.
When all else ends, people trickling out,
that light will still make its mark, over and over,
and never once the same.
~ from Going Around with Bachelors (Brick Books, 2007)
