Spilling Light
by Katherine Wilwol
I don't think these days should be broken so;
these multicolored shards
could not be strung together by weeks
or months to make a life.
True, those that horde sunlight
are brilliant-as girls in dresses
with their smooth legs bending
to the weight of a beat from the corner speakers.
Sometimes the reflection of happiness bends
like a couple, curved together in a silver night.
Slowly, as his fingers through her hair,
night closes into sleep.
These days move in frames
and flashes of gold and green and glances,
coming and going as fragile and fading
as a sigh.
Still, there are days in between
darkened, as to make one's life flicker
as silent and sad as an old movie.
Alone, these days hold hope suspended,
frozen in midnight air.
They dissolve into spilling sky,
scattering shadowed light.
A life is simply a complex
whirlpool of light and dark.
Swirled and strung together,
it grows closer and farther apart
as deep breathing, and stretches as tears
from cheek to chin
to arm-wrist-hand.
A Shattering of Austerity
by Katherine Wilwol
How the sun and moon
change places
so that a crescent yellow
ricochets the shatterings of stars,
and the moon stirs
the thick blue.
And how these windows look East
with austerity and presumption
over a broken earth
rushing in all directions,
wrapping around forests of houses
and the distant Ridley Creek
that gives the appearance of changing
by exposing, or covering
spectacular structures of mounds
of rocks. One can stir the sun into moon
to pull words from this water.
Its voice increases, decreases,
Everything it says
remains.