Untitled (Spring 07)

While reading Jude my glasses blurred.
And when I shut the lights I saw the Milky Way.
Space, all scattered with pinpricks, wasn’t black yet.
And when I closed my eyes, a storm erupted on the sun.
Without the light on earth, you could see by stars alone
Only it would be cold, and without light, so’d go the heat.
We’d have to burn the woods much faster to get warm.

Jude’s situation in the book was only getting worse.
I wondered whether Hardy moved his characters
Around like puppets by which children play fatality scenes.
Yes, things could get bad, but is it usually so bad?
That late at night there wasn’t light enough to read,
Half the world darker, but the other half bright,
Just as a water glass is either half empty or half full.

People rose bright and shiny, as others settled down,
A wave of people rose to the dawn or lied down to rest.
The harvesters churned in the field, and a tower blinked.
Night after night, I wondered how flawed my vision was.
Could I learn braille, and learn to read the world by touch?
As pages blurred, lights were going out for Jude and me.

It might be said, with gnostics, bright skies lie behind the dark--
why Heaven’s Gate boarded their Hale-Bopp comet-space-ship,
Leaving their baggage behind, their orcheotomies half-healed,
Their life-paths terminated in some heiress-donated bungalow,
Among clean sheets, all eyes in ascetically cropped and tilted heads
still glazed and serene.