xxxxiv.

when the light bleeds away into the ground
--I remember another time, when we wore the dark like a skin
and the ways were all in shadow
the sharp obtrusion, of a broken socket lying in the dirt
pricked my knee, the glass slivered my hands as I ran them
through the tufted grass, and the moon glittered
on the prongs the once held the bulb

--I keep my eyes on the ground, on the pile
of twisted metal, lying near my legs
and kept my sight in my fingers,
rolling the fragmented wires between them
and listened to rustles in the bushes.

--at some point, I sank into myself,
and the moon recognized my ghost
in itself, by some foreign science,
it's light made the ghost of a light
in my hands.

someone once smashed a lamp,
on the pavement--
fleeing, perhaps, or threw it when
they did not need it, and I swing
it before me, when night
crawls up out of the sea, when
it spreads hoary wings over the hills

and science and alchemy,
govern us, in the scattered pieces and luck
lies the mechanism by which
we come hold the day in our hands
to cage the night, in glass and wire
the lights we build,
are the bastard children of the sun
and the glint in our eyes.