The dusk is gone, and the air it held has moved on, brushing the trees on its way. The essential air is of little substance, and the passing moment only a quality of light or a fleeting movement of that air. The immobile boles and heavy branches occupy the darkness which they have joined, and the softer leaves whisper to the passing air that follows all that has gone before. The twigs bend toward the past, lifted by the rising leaves. I send words into the dark, knowing they will never find the lost dusk.
Sunday Verse
Anthem
by Carl Phillips
Trapped bee at the glass.
A window.
Instinct is different from
to understand.
Is not the same.
The window is not the light
it fills with— has
been filling with—
What the bee ascends to.
Is full with.
To ascend.
To have been foiled.
To be consistent.
Instinct making
its own equations.
The window is not, for the bee, a window.
Is a form of resistance
not understood
because not understandable,
not in terms
of reason.
A felt force.
A force entirely:
And I said Yes. That it
had been
like that. Resistance
equaling,
at first, the light— And then resistance
as only one of the light's more difficult
and defining features.