Palely the residues of evening coalesce
to form this faint ablation sailing over head,
this lustrous oculus in daybreak’s alabaster dome,
this remnant of the jeweled dark that wanly
drifts across the dawn’s triumphant light.
O fading psychopomp of evening’s gaudy glitter,
priestess of our midnight signs and assignations,
in morning’s scant attire you prophesy the vacancy
of noon where thought hangs heavy in the mind
and yearning looms like smoke in sunlit haze.
Yet how much nearer now in gauzy negligée you seem
than in the incandescent robe you wore last night,
how menacingly close do you appear and closing fast,
as though some furtive faintness hurrying after us
lay almost in our reach but too remote to grasp.
DB Jonas is an orchardist living in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico. Born in California in 1951, he was raised in Japan and Mexico. His work has recently appeared in Tar River, Blue Unicorn, Whistling Shade, Neologism, Consilience Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Decadent Review, The Amphibian, Revue {R}évolution, Kairos, and others. His first collection, Tarantula Season, is scheduled for release in 2023.
