© Steve King
All rights reserved
Today I will greet sunrise with a glance.
It will have to be enough, just seeing—
Empty of new words for the old things,
I’ve done the best to rid myself of them,
shaking bare the word-bins,
purging old and occult motives
with a stream of gilt verbosity.
Emptied are all ill-stocked compartments,
shuttered now, swept clean
of all compunction and desire,
leaving few the rooms that must be kept
to tend a winter season of the soul.
And I will see
what I will see.
It must be enough today
to ply the uses of proximity,
make of it a ready world,
here, where I may gather and restore.
Further words would only draw my thoughts
back to an unintelligible map
filled with strange detours and false starts,
crossroads where I’d be constrained
to choose approaches to unknown ends,
paths a fickle will might not refuse.
No loss, or not so much…
Words often either aren’t enough,
or ring of hubris.
At their simplest, just cries of the heart, I guess.
Aren’t there enough of those to go around?
And how the heart itself does change…
Who would ever trust those cries for long?
I will see…
When I’m ready, you’ll know.
I’ll pick up the phone,
bring more complication to your afternoon.
You’ll see the number flashing,
perhaps recall my voice
and what it said last time.
You may even smile as
you reach,
expecting me to say—
But you would be dismayed, this day:
remembering that I was out of words,
I’d probably hang up before you spoke…
I trust there is some way you’ll be assured—
if I have given up on the old words
it’s only to divine another way.
More quickly than I might foretell from this present refuge,
within these moments of…not saying,
it’s certain some new musings will emerge
to win exemption from intemperate vows.
They will populate these shadows,
the silence and the empty space it fills;
will reach beyond old words,
beyond the weight of wearied thoughts
that lead only to this...
It remains to be seen.
I’ll relish what this solitude allows,
but just as gladly draw the curtain
on this closing day.
Old silence will beget a welcoming void,
to echo with new murmurs of its own.
All pious tribulations gone,
grim musings undone;
each ready moment
filled with whole new seasons just begun,
crowding out those tones of twilight,
calling, as a larkbird lauds the sun,
upon a waiting chorus of tomorrows,
new gathered spirits singing then as one.
