out of the spider silk
after prayer, if not an answer precisely, then a bright echo
I am here
in this moment I know one thing
late snow that tender blanketing
how short the time
how slender the thread
not even the finest calibration
you are the only instrument
I have imagined watching the needle move
shadows cast a kind of pressure
the face of the dial in half-light
it happens when you aren’t looking
I go to the sages for ways to keep from falling asleep
as if technique
have you seen the February sky
when the light not blue not pink
not water not ice
the barest luminescence
the sheeted lake giving it all back but a little softer
horizon lines lines of sight lines that do not converge
the impossible intersection
there
exactly there
what makes you think you could get away with it?
aside from the fact that it’s happened already
all of it
whatever you kept watch for
remember the dying leaves?
tying back the vines?
it’s true
the resurrection is true
you were looking in the wrong places
where you raked where you swept
where the old grout sifted down
how insistent we were on endings
I too have wanted to stop it
I practiced so carefully
no one warned me
the shock on that morning
such yellow such green
an ordinary sunrise and all your fears gone up in a blaze
murmurings I have heard about such things
that gold shaft sundering the blank ground
nothing prepared you
everything conspired
Colette Thomas has presented her poetry in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere since the early 1980s, in settings including the Library of Congress, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and Harvard University. She is the recipient of several poetry awards from Harvard, where she studied with Seamus Heaney. Her poems have appeared in Grand Street, Poet Lore, WordWrights, and other magazines, and in anthologies of Washington-area poets. Colette also teaches Daoist meditation and is a long-time student of the I Ching.
