the view from the children’s circulcation desk, nasser civic center
monday, 01-02-12
4 PM. the sun widens against the back of a cloud, behind the black hill,
making a silver light, a goldish light, bigger than any summer sun,
fill january’s windows.
outside, city hall, with its dirty cement facade, is swallowed by the mirror-
light which makes of human faces a mirror for itself.
seen from harris hill, this light would spread –
the sky would appear greater, perhaps,
but the edges might cut
less precisely than they do from here,
where the light is bound by
framed sills,
driving, like an anchor, through the wet exhaustion
of the year’s second afternoon.
when it sinks
it will sink with the weight
of sleeping bears, with the force of
astral flames extinguished in the terrestrial atmosphere,
until the blue that hosts the moon closes around it like a fist.
in the light made
by early evening, it is easy to sense
what you have learned
before the year was new
is taughtly sewn to
what you will learn
in these lengthening days,
these lengthening days,
these days
still without ending.
