the southpaw stance

It feels like some rite of aperture. Some tide of focus falling just right. This instant, a field of mottled shadow; that moment, the graven purity of shine and hue.  Like the flavor of a photograph tinting the trends remembered, that memory nothing like the sun. My head hung low as the lively breeze rises. The day crowned with flowers and colored feathers, my eyes cast hard to the ground. That vague tension when bee’s wings are prone to hum. A halo of pine needles, clinging tight to the simile.

Light puddles in grainy dollops, greases my witness with tears. Static crackles from the jagged lack of definition, the recoil your only recourse. The season empties its bag of tricks, mixing its metaphors, switching from a southpaw stance. I am the tacky pottery  gone to ruin in bitter shards. I am the echo that seems to shadow everything you say. Patters of grammar left alone in the dry and sightless night. Cracks in the foundation, a stammering row of stones. The rest is adhesion and word order, the measure between the last spin of the tongue and all those natural laws. I see a picture of a picture, a reminder of the lies of eyes.

I convalesce in the telling, the puzzle by the piece and trouble. I glide over the rhyme of light, fake the melody and skip the beat. The breech abides all answers. The gap denies the asking. The draw of this litany, longing all the draught. You so very real and near, there must’ve been a prayer. You so very close and there, it has to be a dream.