"The higher the temperature of a body, the more radiation it emits."
~ Wikipedia
All day, we try to keep alive some small
flickering in our cupped hands, in our mouths, our
breasts. The sun drops earlier now, and this
country is streaked again in shadow. But when
have we ever lived, really, in an absence of darkness?
This is no holiday, but the neighbor at the end of the street
has unfurled the largest flag across her front porch—
it looks so smug, especially the red and white parts
above the flower boxes, an idea of self made
even more visible for its refusal to remember certain
truths in history. Which is to say, the archive
is full of instances when light was reflected, refracted;
polarized, diffracted, scattered. But also transmitted,
as the world is still filled with light-emitting bodies.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
