Someone appears
in the trackless, floating field,
a body the color of cloud,
or the gauze that's
slowly stripped away
after sleep or sex,
or genuine pain.
Continuing with Chase Twichell ‘s poem “The Billowing Lights” from her collection from Northern Spy (1981)
It is a soul
who cautiously looks down,
deciding to stay
in the changeable vapors,
small and unborn,
abstract as a crystal,
and have that be its life.
they are safe from fire
and the transforming cold,
safe from money.
And yet,
in certain kinds of weather,
they draw near
as if for comfort,
as people are drawn
to a snowy, foreign place
after marriage or a loss.
of trees made explicit by rain,
there in the radiant dark
like a black migration.
Or quite overtly
in a day of blindness,
they come close
to ask for something,
but all we hear
is the dry snow,
its whispering friction,
and the scraping
engines of the plows.
dream they long for,
the ways we have
of thwarting the filthy rains,
and blood and age.
out of the sorrowful air,
lured by the billowing
lights of wars
like fish to inedible glitter,
that longing the one
force of their lives.
into the earthly light,
the delicate towns
burning in the radium
of the future,
and the white air falling.
they grow dim and quiet,
embedded in the sky.
And tonight, to keep them
from the slicing wind,
I do not want them.
NOTES
—Above: “The Billowing Lights” a poem by Chase Twichell from her collection Northern Spy (1981)
—Photos by DB: Murals and wall paintings Springfield Oregon, March 2025 the first week of Spring on Planet Earth.
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