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Carola Luther

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Collecting Light

The last brown beech-leaves shine
their little lamps in the dusk. The sun didn’t
rise from its mist today. Lit cars come and go

each raising a neurosis of leaves from the gutter.
Fog coils along the darkening valley, sliding
its belly along the river’s wet back.

The old man with the accent is heading for home.
The house with smoke in a column to the cloud
is his, he doesn’t use smokeless

because where is the flame he says. Yellow glows
in his window every day the sun
doesn’t shine. Today he’s been collecting

a smooth wet stone, copper wire, a rosy toadstool,
a glove (cerise), a new wet plank, a rosehip
(red), a rosehip (orange), a see-through orange

plastic bottle without a label, and held
in his mind the moments of breakthrough
bleeding on the bruised sky to the west. Still alive

he repeats to himself in his own language,
placing his feet carefully within dim yellow pools,
the torch of bright beech held high in his hand.

 

Page(s) 56

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