Roar Shack

Many see a flutterby when they look into this

omniscience I see as a skinniness too densely drawn
or a mystery unhinged by its own symmetry, a twinning
I think of as a listener that thinks along
with me, fused in a tweed, a red herring-
bone weave in the dazzling darkness
and bleached afterness some see

as a necklace of brilliants curved in gift. As if!

A color visible only in ultra-
violet light or a source beyond mathematics I think
of as a second self, an underhum. Or thought. Till I saw
innocence tortured by a force
beyond kindness, an unconditional indifference

or wick for wickedness that wanted trauma dolls.

I tell this as a clock tells time but telling can’t diminish it

as clocks can’t dwindle time. Am I still alive?
Birds that sing behind a waterfall, horses kneeling
Christmas Eve are what others see in what I see
as us delivered up to this chill that searches me.

Copyright © 2013 by Alice Fulton. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on September 6, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.