The Uncertain Law of Certainty

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. -Degas


In the miscellaneous list
of the dark, the colors
although mute
must all still be there.
The dark sides of the planet
wait to shower us
with primrose and satin,
with faces

all the color of clay,
how so?

Colonies of crimson
permute the agony
of decay into rust
and true white
in the back alley of
treachery and art.

He sketched girls
on brown paper bags
to accentuate the curly
ambiguity of their hair
with exact strokes.

This is the mysterious
dark side of the earth
over the morning
as birds quicken
midst the leaves
and float into one
particular sillhouette.

The independent prostrate
shadow kneels steady
near the prostrate and content
moon, shallow on the surface
deep in reflection, distant
lonely cousin of the sun,
the sun created as a proof for it all.
Beware, observare.

A helicopter descends at dawn
on the hospital up the street
and changes all their lives,
out of thin air a dusky bird
hits the glass
she commits adultery
the stories ex post facto
all make sense now,
her hesitation on Friday
before, her head tilted
to the left.
We met him years ago
now he lives here.
Snake, skunk, wolf
on the way down,
wolf, skunk, snake
on the return.
This broken heart
keeps breaking.