Finally
I slipped free from the
vanity of day
and landed here:

another clean-carved horizon,
another apparition of moon,
another chiseled scowl
steaming through a falling sky
where it all begins
and ends,

and She's not giving up the secrets,
not for a handful of glowing dust
creaking down,
and certainly not for me,
little seeker, twisting
in questions,
only knowing there
is this . . .

and a body we never owned,
but certainly owns us—
lured us into believing it was
the killer of dreams
and lord of our nightmares:
fragile, seductive prison.

So we play along while light
presses against the windows of
of our raging: Let me in!

We rarely do.

I have a friend who is dying and I don't
know if I should say goodbye and pretend that
it's a serious thing to slip out of an iron suit
we imagine is all our grief and majesty,
ambition and stunning tragedy—

Yes, the dream wore sequins
and a paper crown. Quite the
trickster, this Game:
Look, over here, no, here and here,
see this sorrow,
believe this ending
before you wake up and say:

So that was it?

Under a spray of burning poems,
I take down your volume of
prehistoric heroes and
villains with beautiful names,
and think of how you will
try to finish their stories.

A laughing immortal in on the joke.
A vessel of secrets.
A body of light.

Patricia Joan Jones