Continuing through the
Days of Awe in a mild state
Of existential apathy
The cause of which can
Be reasonably deduced by
Observing the fact that
Most of us spend almost
All of everyday preoccupied
With shadows barely
Acknowledging the
Suffuse whiteness
Flowing from the blinding
Disc about us other than
Strain from any sustained
Effort to look directly at it

Sext 

From the head of the year
To the eve of atonement
We are invited to reconcile
Each with each and all
Which mostly we neglect

“Some Rays are disposed to exhibit red colour
And no other; some a yellow and no other,
Some a green and no other, and so of the rest.”
Each Ray proper and particular to itself yet
Depending as well on reception and perception

Earth’s axis tilts nature’s green veil lifting
To reveal sub-rosa hints: lemon yellows
Ochre reds supple violets of well veined
Solliès figs. Artemis disrobed, her marmoreal
Breasts burnished by her brother’s bright brow

We be between future and past
Creatures of pre-existing conditions
Creators of whatever we permission
Looking south our left illumined
Right in shadow. Which do we choose?

At a hinge of infinite geometric planes
One earth’s axis plus an abstraction
This same axis and you, here and now
Time measured at the angle of transit
Where personal zenith crosses the celestial

Terce

Long shadows reach into the future
Light flows forward from the past
Especially bright on history’s edge
Earth hurtling fast into the solar wind
Sun blazing between 30 and 40 degrees

“Colours are not Qualifications of Light
Derived from Refractions or Reflections of
Natural Bodies but original and connate
Properties, which in divers Rays are divers.”
Color found in the fracturing of light itself

As color awakes we would probably agree
Light reflects: more sun prompting perception
Of deeper colors. Direct light unveiling nature’s
Subtle gradation of form. Brighter the light
More florescent the object, varied the color

Apollo arrives replacing his father
Twins now dancing or are they racing
In either case finding seizing this day.
Owl calling through fog crow crying in a tree
All rising as life is restored to color by 6:33

Three minutes before six all is
Black gray cobalt and Egyptian blue
But beginning beyond the mountain
Below that wisp of cloud the east
Glimmers with pale yellow and pink

Prime

Zeus and Artemis embrace
Father with daughter dancing
Across the dome of space
Their tender radiance
Extending to us here below

“Whence arises all that order and beauty
Which we see in the world… The changing of
Bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very
Conformable to the course of Nature,
Which seems delighted with transmutations.”

What is real?
What I see in this weak light
Or what I will see at sunrise
What I perceive here and now
Or what I remember of yesterday

My mountain meadow becoming a
Grisaille landscape moonlight washing away
Sunny glazes extracting sculptural form
Resilient flora becoming as if resistant
Marble chiseled in classical relief

Grass that I know as green appears as
White oak leaves a cloudy kind of gray
Considering the sky I discern (conjure?)
Dirty blue or creamy brown or dusty violet
Perception informed by texture more than tint.

Liturgy of Hours

Lauds

Half-moon moving through cloudless
Cusp of night and late summer morning
Binary of pearly light and velvet shadow
Dim isolated stars zodiac entirely erased
Able to count each apple on their tree

Where Mary escaped the massacre of innocents
A crowd’s innocence is betrayed in self-righteous
Revenge. On the same day at the same hour
That I pause to wonder how beauty abounds sixteen
Centuries of beauty is lost to malevolence enflamed.

Grief anger mutual reproach extracting the
Middle dividing the whole dispersing each part
Ancient umbilicus mutilated modern memory
Impoverished sacred connections severed
We succumb to that which separates.

Meanwhile at the top of another continent
Millions are packed between river and desert
Shared space dense with variegated time
Rage released by the massacre at Rabaa
Exploding in assault, arson, and murder.

Finding in this midst a portal to the
Ultramundane, where modest is
Magnified becoming unexpectedly
Marvelous If I will perceive and
Receive its metamorphosis.

Despite the intrinsic mediocrity
Morning mid-day post-meridian and
Evening gradually emerge into
Glorious light: Conversation soft
Shadows illumination contemplation.

Revirgining

On Mary’s mid-August memoriam
I awake near my continent’s middle
In a mid-range hotel in a middle
Sized city (paid with Marriott points)
Well past prime, long past mid-life.

Stepping into sunlight
Blindingly bright

Where I trip and fall
Scraping my shin

Lending my blood
To the Delphiniums

Gauzing the wound
Retrieving my pants

Beginning again…

To scour this skin
Shave this stubble

Slipping into a steaming bath
Emerging somewhat raw and red

Smearing oil onto my head
Over my naked body

Scratch the scab
Scrub the hair

Brush my teeth
Even the tongue

Clip each claw
Every ragged edge

Opportunity
To strip my selves

To remove each layer of
Protection projection

To scour this skin
Shave this stubble