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Desolate and Perfect Now
There's something
about the Earth
when it no
longer speaks,
something about an
immobile, gray
everything—
even the wind
carved in stone,
river mist like
dreams of Vesuvius,
calm that
doesn't wait for
the sun,
quiet oozing
like snakes
from the wet
branches:
This is either
cast-iron despair
or peace,
while within gleams a
prism of varying
shades of hope.
It's a counterfeit joy,
but it's enough,
so I'll take
the delicate violence
of solitude,
the phantom chains
of stillness,
the soundless opera,
tragic and opulent,
the symphonic tomb,
the sacrament of ice,
the tiniest
parts of God—
each one the cosmos.
I'll take Now
because it
is everlasting
and all possibilities
and all we need
and every world
right here.
Patricia Joan Jones
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