words

i watched dusk descend in its western slide
a pale gradient from purple to orange
between power lines and rooftops
and the silhouette of trees
and the immediate world before me.

the polestar sat dim and remote
tethered to the makings of the universe
and i wondered when it would burn out
and if so too would the world
that had set its course for eons
by its fixed sweep in the dark space without.

a spider crawled from ground to tree
and in this alien perception
of neither night nor day
it appeared the thing was climbing
to consume the star as prey
caught in its silken web
and then it moved back down
and perhaps pondered
these same thoughts,
these forlorn wonderings.

the sun was well below the horizon
and it seemed as though a great fire
surged on the outer reaches of the earth,
slow malaise of god’s grace
in far away lands,
the second coming under way,
a pause in the deliberate slaying
of old world method, predark massacre.

this macabre end of day
well suited to the strange witness,
an eclipse of enterprise
separating one life from the next,
obscured these splitting atoms
to a malarian onslaught of amber eves,
this burning core of molten anima
taking back earth, sky, star and spider
in its ultimate reckoning.

-S.C. Martinez