Trish in Transit

As a child growing up

in a grandma’s

musty home,

I hated dusk

and its slanted rays

of dying light.

 

After school and mid-afternoon shows,

sun beams, like stealthy soldiers,

climbed through windows,

caught riotous dust motes,

cast long shadows that colluded

with dark corners,

and wispy spectators

hiding behind locked doors.

 

I sulked as I eyed the

shifting shades, the

late afternoon draping itself

in a dull, lifeless blue,

a resigned king donning a cape,

before plunging fully into

a deep, yawning darkness.

 

I was forced to mourn

the death of a day,

the end of carefree living;

judgement coming in the form

of nostalgia-tinged hues

invading private spaces,

breaking, entering, commanding

taking over sense of time

and reason.

 

The thought haunts me still;

But seeing light wax golden

over undulating fields and seas,

where it rules with grace;

 

Catch it kiss the tips of waves

And gallop off the foaming whitewater;

 

Watch unwitting silhouettes

turn into pantomime against

an artist’s splash of sky;

 

The fear converts into awe,

the death sentence, into suspended beauty.

 

All life is meant to end

just as

the sea

is meant

to swallow

the fiery orb.

 

The heavenly monarch,

certain of resurrection,

marches to its own funeral,

day in,

day out;

but

not without

a grand show

and a final burst

of color.