Prism
PRISM (WHITE LIGHT)
Ice & the shadows of ice like the white scar
Of wind upon the world like the dust
Of polar flares strafing the St.Petersburg night
As the saint is laid again upon the grill of
Circumstance above the searing pearl ash until
Even the stars slowly drilling the sky rotate
In their boiling sockets & all hell breaks
Apart its howling white teeth its breath
Ruptured into the rapturous spectrum of
Pain by which we know the hues
Of our passage each one of us still assembling
The complicated palette (as in Make me
A pallet on your floor) where sleep splinters
& the rage of the new day again coaxes us alive
Poem by David St. John from Prism
© Lance Patigian, from Prism