1.  Lying in the Dark

I stare toward empty heaven
which darkness fills
and I lie down,
become the horizon,
axis for the night to spin.  
The past was worse than you thought,
voices say, and poetry won’t keep us quiet.
I float toward sleep
on a tide of loss,
drifting toward morning,
beached by sunrise,
stranded in the empty skin of another day.

2. The Reappearing World

New light assembles the same objects
and forgives mere longing
in ordinary darkness.
Gloom is porous.
Dawn seeps in.
Things of the world resist
but return to radiance.
There are voices, laughter, faint at first.
Love like laughter comes when it will.
Warm flecks of morning dance in a square of sunlight.