Photo by Annie Spratt
And When the Time Comes
Gregory O’Neill
One must learn the etiquette
of the final gesture–extending
the palm as if it were a personal
formal theorem. To scatter sparks
against the steel-blue decree
of an early ice, remaining
a witness to the unasked.
The light withdraws its long-
limbed argument. We sit on the
lawn’s upholstery, watching
the debris of a stubborn,
unlearned magic and it’s sleight
of hand across the night above.
It insists on its own duration,
despite our sense of a finale.
Are we the closure or the
falling leaf’s loose logic?
Recall the sonatinas
of the mundane–the dusk-
dense air. Let this slim
breach–this stutter
in the earthly, resolve like
a wandering chord
that found its way home
without our help at all.
Gregory O’Neill
One must learn the etiquette
of the final gesture–extending
the palm as if it were a personal
formal theorem. To scatter sparks
against the steel-blue decree
of an early ice, remaining
a witness to the unasked.
The light withdraws its long-
limbed argument. We sit on the
lawn’s upholstery, watching
the debris of a stubborn,
unlearned magic and it’s sleight
of hand across the night above.
It insists on its own duration,
despite our sense of a finale.
Are we the closure or the
falling leaf’s loose logic?
Recall the sonatinas
of the mundane–the dusk-
dense air. Let this slim
breach–this stutter
in the earthly, resolve like
a wandering chord
that found its way home
without our help at all.