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
