Diurnal

If you recall there was
a dazzling dreamlike light in those regions--

those lush and splendid places you had never been
yet remembered with tropical summer ache
as you lay bleeding in a verdant garden paradise

those fabled florid lands you knew did not exist
but for which you made grand and hopeful plans
and elaborate travel arrangements

those magical daylit moments you remembered so wistfully
yet which never came to pass--
all the glowing would-be memories stored in your vast
uncatalogued archive of wishes unfulfilled

--these too are part of your great and sparkling
experience on this earth.

Do you in fact recall
the strangely splendorous light in those regions?
--it shone with the radiance, it seemed
of glorious and disappearing suns

burning, laying us waste
in the interior deserts of our hearts
bursting forth bright and purple
a floral effulgence of dreams
of ardent solar longings

--there were also in those regions
blossoms bitter, brilliant, useless
there were blazing blinding lights that cascaded
from an unreachable ecstatic sky

--there were also in those regions
many instances of water.

*

Steven Holland
July 20, 2013