Bare Life
Bare life―a sky crowded with lurid nothingness
On a single summer day that rose up enough
But will not set. It keeps needling its cliché
In some travelers’ drab irises the same way
Without any luck for some silver-winks, pair by pair,
Since there’s nowhere to be except where they are,
And there are no journeys behind them begun
To keep blood flowing warm; for blood, there’s none.
Such hopelessness is excruciating in short.
It lacks the bravery of movement, of thought,
Or such strife and of a wasp tight-roping
On a spider’s web for the black widow, provoking;
It’s a riddle with one way to obviate it―to dissolve
The mulish tirelessness of the painting carved―
A metaphor for being too comfortable and a rigid script.
It starts with a ditty of light rain, drip-drop-drip,
On the canvas, and colors soaked into the dirt;
And with some sunshine, a rainbow grows out overt
Which crowds the sky and with all that’s celestial,
And more things like clouds silvered with potential.
