She calls it lunatic light and perhaps she’s right.
There is nothing
but chance, a slim guide of sliced light
pointing for a moment at a woman
seen from outside through the window,
using her wrist to wipe her forehead
over the steaming pots, the washing,
the ever-washing ….
Perhaps time is a sickle threshing violets
before we have the chance to enter
their centers, their tinge and change;
Perhaps we are not meant to see
this world, but only glimpse it.
Repeating our slight gestures
as we try again
to catch the scent; there is not enough
time to watch sheerness ripen.
I do know the unexpected
always arrives.
It may enter flying downward, or
like dust off the mesa,
upward in twirling spiral;
however it comes, we are not prepared.
We think we have known
all these years
how to awaken our tongue, our throat,
our soaking hands; but
we understand, finally,
it all has been mist rising off darkened leaves.
The glance is all we need,
we who were made to be cut, outlined, erased.
Veronica Golos is author of four poetry books: A Bell Buried Deep (Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize); Vocabulary of Silence (New Mexico Poetry Prize); Rootwork, and GIRL (Naji Naaman Honor Prize for Poetry.) Her work has been extensively translated into Arabic, Persian, Spanish and Italian. Her new work can be found in https://plumepoetry.com/veronica-golos-interviewed-by-amy-beeder. She lives in Ranchos, New Mexico, with her husband David Pérez.