It's how peacefully white folds into black,
The abundance of lack
As the sun scatters living light over the waves
And the many dimensions arrive
And leave just as mysteriously,
Like mountains that offer glimpses of eternity
Before assuming the shapelessness of cloud.
It's an invitation to what never seems to come,
Just ice shrouds on pine islands, crystalline tree lines,
Fishing boats with hooks in pink half-light
That passes for sunrise here.
The mist sweeps by like powder to reveal what isn't there.
The smoke of a deeper war
Explodes in the cold distance.
Because we are curious, we can see
Until how we want the story to end
Leaves fingerprints on our eyes
And we go blind to possibility,
Tapping the stick of our will on the hard mystery
Of whether the illusion can be kind enough to be real
Or we ungracious enough to mind if it can't.
Snow negotiates the crags like a jagged, eternal smile
To snag whatever life it has left
From the sudden, inextricable fall
Off the hanging vapor that hugs the hills
Carved and torqued into divine curves that like the falls
Find new life, in the inner eye, the iridescent purples
Of what needs to exist but cannot.
