Rings
       

Distance gels the ghostly into fictions
of solidity. Dust and wrecked ice
shimmer in bands of alternating light
and dark, pretending the disk-tight spins.
Nothing perspective cannot counterfeit.
Giant planets that pull the reins of space
are but rounded clouds, hardly fit
by logic to pluck a harp. Their surfaces race
centuries of storms, one wide enough to gulp
an earth in its crimson eye. As saintly painters
halo beings of the light, the culpable
laurel tinsel on whirls of worldly raptures.
There is no intimate mirage—nearness knows.
Ask the mournful, when their hour is close.

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Copyright © 2015 Ricardo Pau-Llosa All rights reserved
from Birmingham Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission