How to distinguish darkness from deeper dark,
as what light there is strikes a receding retina
as something incongruous. Body no longer
sensitive as light, skin flaking to leaves
shrivels to bark, fingers dwindle to twigs;
eyes glow like knot-holes harder than glass.
Darkness comes not unexpectedly, since daily
thanks is given we’ve only plunged the moon
of our toenails in. Too closely god-attended
we dance ahead of his fingers like midges.
We have not known a god’s vengeance. When his hand
closes over our wings, some kindliness makes a cave
of his palm, and we grow like mushrooms in great
dark. Pin-head roots thread swine flesh that rots
like leafmould. Grain bristles carcases.
In a cave a tree grows, roots feeding on light
laid down aeons ago, like water of prehistoric
storms. Light burns annealment into the ring
of years, the sear of desire. Indirection
in the dark is finding direction out.
In the tree’s dark, pressing against the cave’s belly,
in the bitter bark, very heart-root, there is
secret gathering. A god’s generosity returns
flesh for wood, so the light of a darkened sun
shocks the twigs into leaves breathing blindly as fish.
Argus-eyed in every pore, newly sensitive with decisiveness
of loss, the crown cracks in the twist of the year,
flesh imprinted with decals of constellations,
like Augustus’ birthmark of the Great Bear.
From humiliation of deeper dark
comes humility of darkness.
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