This Long Seasoning of Light

Night in middle May divides the muddle
of you neatly, briefly; day – tugging
dawn, delaying dusk – otherwise
is chiefly light – our star now
immemorially starts to char again
the slice of slightly oblate spinning rock
we live on with ballooning luminescence –

whose imprecise soft shock at five a.m.
seems premature – stays on and on
to probe more surely into evening
than you’re ever first prepared to think
polite: until, by now, a brightness so
prevails that even you have started
falling under the enchantment

of its blinding veil: spangling the angle
of your world, altering its tune, until
you think the scheme might permanently
turn to June. Magnanimously, you
accept your fate! – decide you’ll follow
what it destines to the letter.
You guess you’d damned well better.

.