May 16

Today is a golden-gauze day
with worn beach-stones and three kinds of light:
the light in the paintings;
deep, cold shade;
and the brightest kind of light,
which makes every place indoors seem
like the inside of your eyes
for minutes at a time.
I am home and made from the light.
I am glad to hide in newspaper-pages,
deep in the garden fern-leaves,
from motherly rebuke and sisterly inquiring.
I drink my coffee black and wonder at
the world calamities: a deep-sea spill
miles beneath the barnacled ship-bellies,
belches toxic waste, and a volcano explodes,
as it has for some time,
flicking ash into the atmosphere
to lick the sides of silver-plated planes.
From my perch, among homey welcome
and close-keeping, it all seems positively
prehistoric.

CDL