It's Still Life

The stars fall out of heaven
and they sting the night with a thousand bees.

That brisk trumpet-voice
is an ocean’s heart, the song of infinite tides.

The day is weary and undone,
and we whisper clear our doubtlessness.

We watched the sky turn to smudged light,
and asked questions of its sorceries.

The wax cooled hard
on a midnight river of blackberry shiver.

Those vast white days were winter’s measure
of our peril and cold ache.

That streetlight, that signal that filled
my room, my brain, my unwoven sleep.

Gravity pulled that ship to its
ruddered feet; worn, bare, there to sleep.

She’s an interrupted swiftness,
like a shawl for a chattering wind.

written for Miz Quickly’s Aspirations. Nine out of the ten words from this list were used. I’m missing “neighbours” and I have no clue why I’m struggling with that word. I shall run that one by my brain again tomorrow. These are “American Sentences” – a poetic form using 17 syllables in each independent thought. Miz Quickly’s words are:

sting
brisk
clear
watch
wax
measure
neighbor
signal
gravity
interrupt