I don't even mind that the air is chilly enough that I shiver. It is still and fresh and the night is quiet. I gaze at the trees and watch the slow climb of the moon, branch by branch, until it has nearly freed itself. Then the clouds thicken and the black lace of the trees grows blacker and the moon dims. Perhaps it will brighten again once it has climbed higher, or perhaps the clouds will continue to thicken and hide it all night. I'll be back to see, as long as I remain awake. I don't want to miss a wonder should one occur.
Sunday Verse
Flash Photography
by Eric Gamalinda
This could have been someone
who died of lightning long ago:
easy to imagine how the skies
broke and the fulguration
like a skull exploding. I know
only what I see with my eyes.
Think of it as a current
impervious to the ordinary run
of lives, a source of ancient mystery
but meaningless and inadvertent
now, a whole world spun
of rumor, of perplexity.
Chooses what it likes to recall.
Selects not with love,
but light. Does its harm
in darkness, in the thrall
of poisons. May be portraits of,
still lives with, soft porn.
Or more urgent: as though to say
all that we've lost
still persist in their absence,
and the photograph is a way
of not seeing, and the most
we can hope for is that the lens,
this indifferent apparatus,
somehow borrows the light
of those who gave meaning
to the darkness in us,
and the faculty of sight
dispels the terrifying
realization that we are alone,
that the world forgets.
All told, not absence but memory
takes what it can,
and we pay our debts
by remembering completely.