Who wields the hand behind the whitened blade
that carves the edges out around the clouds
to let out light, the fire encircling shade
a fracture spewing sunbeams over jade?
And all those carvings, where on land are they?
Perhaps the carver catches them before they fall
or maybe they dissolve in stormy ray
and crash as crystal rains, a broken spray.
Jade forests turn to gold beneath the sun
and honey milk flows over endless crowds
illuminating sweat of those who run
and melting through the ice of day. It’s done.
Why should the preface of the night be flames?
The sun’s farewell, before she dons her shrouds
and tucks behind the mountain range’s frames
the final shriek from she who no one tames.
Is it because each time she’s dying new?
To rise again through song of dawning birds?
Perhaps this wild display is her tattoo
upon the world before she’s gone from view.
Perhaps she never knows if she’ll return
Perhaps she wields the knife herself, an art
She makes the color blood, in patterned fern
She burns the heavens with her spirit’s churn
The question that these paintings all beget
is not the sunset then, but shy regret
that as a mortal, I may be offset
by night that’s bound to end my own vignette.
When that day comes, I’ll wait, a parapet
and hear the air films moving through the trees
I’ll see upon the ground my silhouette
inked by my friend, her knife wrapped in a net.
The sky is calm; she writes my epithet
a blue with hues of starry alphabet
Tonight I meet her, and together we’ll forget
the reason why we feared to be reset.
balladrael 
