Sentendo fender l’aere a le verdi ali,
fuggì ’l serpente, e li angeli dier volta,
suso a le poste rivolando iguali.
—Canto 8, lines 106–108
Cumulative smoke of different burnings-off:
tide that sweeps in late afternoon, makes
evening stormy when there’s no precipitation,
no thunder, no lightning: just brooding.
Its gather is a marbling of the Euclidean:
array of densities swirling and embodying,
which has you stuck on portent: hoping for prayers
from outside, doubling your penances, eyes smarting,
nose running, a dazed sense of belonging.
And suspended above the horizon, not low enough
to be called sunset, the blood-red disk, sun
you can stare at endlessly, an addictive ache.
Walking the gravel through invisible terraces,
a legless lizard works past us, switching its double-time
action, its sibilant stutter that has Tracy lifting Timmy
faster than identification: the snake that’s not a snake
encouraged into dead-weed fringes, crackling
through seeds and husks. All of us hooked on the sun.