Liability and Feast

Perturbed, impatient end-of-April glare
blares on – exacting indiscriminate revenge
against each surface, object, dusty
corner in the forlorn place: but maybe
it’s not quite as bad as you had thought –

to see what time, and care, and randomly
inevitable probabilities-come-true –
and night – have wrought: the wobbly lines,
the fallibilities, chiaroscuro, mess: happiness,
confusion, pain in great profusion: one

beloved friend has conquered her distress,
post-stroke; another, on his birthday,
sits inside a psych ward in psychosis –
as you poke your violin preparing for
a concert some orchestral passages

of which your fingers have refused
to play (reliably, at least): but that may be
the liability and feast of day, and light – its
evident determination to inveigle you into
a less defended view, capacity for sight.

.