The Reconstruction of the Fictive Space

I open my eyes and a season passes:
A single moth wing shudders on the sill.
The gate cannot open into the overgrown grass.

But the way, lit by foxfire and firefly,
By the flint-flash of grit at the pearl's heart,
Is a past words cannot return to history,

To what the swallows inscribe on the air,
And here, on the outskirts of memory,
I look off again into that distance,

As if into a future, the lightning opening
Before my eyes like Scripture.
The equation at hand can be proven

By the spiral descent of the fishhawk,
By the curve of a tiger-lily's stalk.
Yet all I see is surface glare,

An afterlife of the afterimage.

Copyright © 2003 Eric Pankey All rights reserved
from Oracle Figures
Ausable Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission