Mysteries of Afternoon and Evening
The wind is fitful now:
soot piles in the corners
of new buildings,
gulls stumble out of place
in ragged branches
to skim against a rise
of pond water.
The children watch, breathless
with the birds.
They feel an emanation
from this shuddering place.
This winter evening
the sky cracks with cardinal color
and we sit in cooing wonder
like dwarves at the Venetian court
must have done —
amazed at Tiepolo's sunshot ceilings;
like us, they were fickle,
aware of smaller inconstancy.
But the dazzle above, enclosing
seems fit or made for this
fragment of belief.
Copyright Credit: Rachel Sherwood, "Mysteries of Afternoon and Evening" from Mysteries of Afternoon and Evening. Copyright © 1981 by David Trinidad. Reprinted by permission of David Trinidad.
Source: Mysteries of Afternoon and Evening (Sherwood Press/Yarmouth Press, 1981)