Christine Murray

#1

now’s dark is a clever

adjustment of the iris

to her not-lightness,

now’s dark is an anguish

of silhouette hidden in

tree’s whispering reed

now’s dark is a white

chair beneath a tree

moon-illumined and

somehow wrongly set

there. 

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#2

now’s dark is a heap of mottled

silver-black

ashen in its not-light, it could be a

pile of ash,

it's the silver of silica dotted with

miniscule impurities, sunless.

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#3

now’s dark the pearl

mother-of-pearl interior

is imagined in its streaks

of opalescent, it doesn’t

reflect anything on its surfaces

beneath the black skin of its

bone button, or chain, its

dullness is an indictment

of light’s absences, its cycles.

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#4

now’s dark is the absence of light-ness

from the action of being / now’s dark is

the lament unvoiced none the less it has

turbulence and it will not stop crying even

the skin /

thinks bloomlight its nothing/ its nowhere

a slip of light illumines the secret shell

that pearly white/now’s dark negates it

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#5

now’s dark has not caught a cobweb

canopy cornered and waving in slats

at a window that gives back black as

a matter of course and sometimes a

silvered face will float in window’s

mirror if the moon presents her globe

now’s dark shows tree-secrets in

silhouette if the eye adjusts enough.