by Pattiann Rogers

[mery-bast.livejournal.com]

DATA FROM THIS LINE OF LIGHT LABORATORY


This particular line of light
is the angle of the black mare's
neck as she bends to the evening
grasses. It is the same angle
composing the history
of the trajectory remaining
in the comet's wake, the same
angle inherent to the salt curve
of the wave falling into its fall.

The jiggling gold ball on the jester's
pointed hat is the shaking line
of circular light that occurs
whenever the king sits crying.
This line is similar to the sunside
circle of the orange tossed up
by the juggler so high its only being
is its fire shaking against the sky.
It is akin also to the trembling
the light makes in the tears
of the childless at night.

One certain light of line-clarity
is a single strand of cobweb
floating as its own sun across
the lawn. Another is the crack
in a cut crystal vase so fine
it is seen only when held
to the sky, which fine clarity
sounds like a violin replicating
the liquid line left by the sea's
advance on the moonlit sand.

This line of illumination was created
when thieves first forced the sealed
entrance to a desert tomb and starlight
fell at once straight to its stone floor.

Light lines of double vision
imply either parallel light
off the tines of silver pickle forks
or off the steel of railroad tracks
empty at high noon on the prairie,
or the sun divided in the vision
of the surface-floating whirligig
beetle, or the day divided
by the separately rotating eyes
of the vine green chameleon.

Two lines of light bisecting
at right angles can signify either
two search beams crossing at sea,
or a collision of sincerity and ruse
at the subatomic level, or hope,
or an apparition of hope created
by those investigating every sign
of light at any level.


-Pattiann Rogers