Shades

How is it that fissure of morning brightness,
just there, where curtains don't quite meet,
can generate a hotel room full
of grey outlines, nooks, niches of wrinkled blankets--
a shadowland?  As if a fraction of dawn
equals a full dusk, as if morning
has been husbanded, doled out,
one crack of dawn per room, don't be
greedy, day broken up into cubicles
of colorless form, looming hints of depth,
how efficient! 

But why, then, outside,
such extravagance of sunlight?
There one mica-flaked square of concrete sidewalk
basks in glare enough to touch
with grey-brown intelligence the forms
of a thousand suites, the sweets
of a thousand forms, and there,
a glassy waste of shop windows
blasts the eyes with brilliance enough
to illuminate gently the texts
of all the yellowed classics ever fingered
in the mellow depths of reading rooms,

enough to detach from grey dawn
with just the softest mottling hint of umber
a swell of shadowed nakedness
(were you with me), a billion nakednesses
in a billion waking rooms--one unreadable
window's waste of morning dazzle
could touch all these lives with promise,

as once, when I reached to touch, lightly,
that dim fullness beside me,
my closed eyes spilling over with light.

Dean Blehert
(posted by Pam)