An old tale of light

You looked inside me. ~Griet from Girl With A Pearl Earring

Deep Vermeer

Catch me then looking at the light
in solemn acts of perception, the supple
cherish of how the moment slips and slips
away into longing, into the sacred ache
of misembracing what eludes an eye to
settle as a ghost upon a heart, vanishing
it little by little until absence overwhelms.

I cannot stop this looking as I cannot cease
this longing. It is an old tale of light, this,
how objects find their pure caress before
the presence of what endures in time yet
ungiven to itself. I would hold you thus,
immeasureless and expansive as whatever
ages to come might confer in failed attempts
to diminish or subsume by a weather of brush.



Seized in the thrum of time, time uncrippled by
our sense of it, time thrown from the washbucket
of a maid across the night sky, a swath of soft
pearls spilled in hard gas, you will endure
until enduring no longer matters to itself.

Catch me looking at the light then, until the looking
receases me from this endless doing so. Catch me
looking then until the last of the light looks back.

Joseph Gallo
November 22, 2007