Moss again by Jan Carroll
When in 1999 we lived
the days
echoing or enfolding
quietly, lighted in
children’s weather
remembering what surreal
brilliance was
gone by elsewhere
sometimes, a terminal luster
on a missed eclipse
of forecasts, unapocalyptic
As a test of secular faith
As a wire that all
is forgiven in flight
or forgotten by the promontory
of water and shadow
sometimes
ashrouded, swept back in
a hollow tide.
(the scribbles of the dooms are
for selfcursed minds)
I wouldn’t have been
able to imagine
that the lilac would
dance out through the
breeze in quite this way.
so unpatterned
or that there would be that suspension
of clearness that is
caught in the eye on
in a windstream that carries
the resolution of Bach’s notes
that go forward to
the handless fire
hover on buried sand
When I thought all
there was to do to survive was
drink, revanquished.
Scarred and empty without
the fight that made us
drowned, not condemned
then, I recall nights.
for Jan and Jack
Alternatetakes2 