Skyjinx

Skyjinx

by Gideon Burton 

In ripping ribbons melted into mist,

to clotted cloths that stanch the evening's wound--

these quiet clouds delay the sense of soon,

then vanish into blackness, slippery-brisk.

There's virtue in the waiting, and there's risk:

I could forget the shaping of the dunes

whose crackled craters pock the gliding moon,

indifferent to the smoothing eons' tricks.

It circles round to us in quiet waves

that press our porous blushing memory

in furrow folds upon the bending back

of aching atmosphere. Just what behaves?

The sky is metaphor for memory:

so vast, so fluid, bruising blue with black. 

Photo: flickr - shutupyourface