scission

‘The power
of the world rubs
against inner visions and the
friction
generates pictures.’
— Carroll Dunham

the clouds were sown so regularly under our little plane, the first we took together —
vaporous lumps plucked and tucked into the verdant folds of the valleys,
their gauziness testing the limits of form, our wisdom of it —
small markers of our journey across the atlantic, some number of plumes per hour

protective carapace of metal shoulders any friction as we stream through the sky, the plane shade shifting over the protrusions and voids, shading deeper in voids, though deeper within darkness

that night’s darkness brought inversion
in plain sight, looking up from a crease — vision framed by pleats of rock
                                        rumpled in the course of time —

eyes held the abyss
in a scission between stillness and motion
                                        the constellations held us
                                                            in ferocious isolation

                                                            (their brightness testing the limits
                                                            of form, our wisdom of it)

scission

that moment, brief as a photo, held life relative to the magnitude of star-time
                                                                                                stone-time

               The world focuses and ricochets out again,
               seen.