Limits

I heard that

some of the photons

the sun creates

never reach its surface.

Their own gravity

pulls them back

inside themselves.

*

The light is passing through the black holes in his eyes

to be projected onto the soft white walls of the retinas

which will convert energy with cone and rod receptors

into neural impulses that will travel the length of nerves

across the optic chiasm and into the left and right visual cortices

where my knowledge ends and magic begins,

and I am starting to wonder how

does it ever escape again.

*

Dusk is on her upper eyelid,

and the air is thick and warm.

She is resting on the front steps of her home,

wrapping a dark blue and dust-flecked cloth

around and around and around

the milky-pink body of a child.

The child is giggling and reaching for something

with tiny outstretched arms which she takes

and folds over the irregular risings of his belly

so that she might finish the wrapping, and this is neither

the metaphor of the caterpillar spinning its cocoon

nor the spider spinning its caterpillar,

but the rhythm of the act soothes the child nonetheless.

When she reaches his lower back, she stops to run

her finger over a series of stitchings just above the spine.

Little black threads bend under her touch the way empty

oak branches might give way before a strong december wind.

She rests her hand on this place, letting her weight sink into it,

as if it is the bindings of a holy text,

and she is holding the judge’s gaze.

*

The last red lights of dusk are falling

under the far side of the earth

and children are growing quiet.