A Patron of Shallow Light

I don't often greet 
disciples 
of Midnight anymore.

I'm so empty, so hungry
for places more vast 
than what my mind contains,
so weary 
of being the keeper 
of my own fate.

I still wonder what truths
are concealed 
behind burnished seals 
of constellations

but I'm too tired 
to witness the sequined, 
star-coded riddles 
that hint at prophesies sewn 
into the folds 
of small hours

and the flow 
of wide, serous-steel veins 
that wound darkness
as the moon 
is slain in fair deaths.

I used to shiver 
anticipating the feeling 
of some strange 

Knowing

that animated skin with goose-flesh
and eroded bones with gravity
as if both 
would seek to diffuse into night
and abandon me 
as a pile of human pulp.

I tell myself that I am too old,
too sensible 
to make wishes on stars
or search for optimistic omens
among symbolic stickers affixed 
to God's great ebon envelope.

Instead, 
I seek direction 
from the silence of my senses,
in the dullness that comes 
with light without depth,
work without pleasure

and I am bled 

by symptoms of naked hours
and loneliness,
swathed in the patient void
of bright, bulbous deities
that allow no light to assume
greater clarity or purpose 
than theirs.

Copyright © Jean Marble | Year Posted 2009

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