Faded.

The floorboards tremble.
this rising light is feline—quiet,
undemanding. it listens.
it is an eye tracing silent edges,
a silver cat that slides around corners,
then pauses.
washing her paws.

The air is of moss,
fonts, stars—tears—fall
the hermetic’s memories,
the whispering rain
of quiet days in
solitary rooms
or dark cedar forests,
or chambers no bigger than a water closet.

Caves that glisten.
the desert,
where nights are so dark–
crowded with filaments,
and where the heat of day
is a stillness that shimmers.

Entranced by the tick and crackle of the heavens,
we return to deadly waiting.

There are no words,
only a contraction,
a breathing-out.

A crow calls—
black ink.
a punctuation mark
amidst thickets of phthalo green.

Green. reflected. rejected.
green. the cawing of the leaf,
its voice opening into the world—
a bid for warmth,
or light.

What compels a creature to call?
to reveal itself.
to be locatable?
and to echo a groove in the record
of faded aeons…