MORNING

It comes softly

moving aside clouds

as gently as a lover

opens his sleeping partner’s eyes

with a finger and a smile;

eyes that were closed like doors 

of a theatre where dark dramas

played out on the stage

of deepest imagination,

complicated thoughts, dreams of fright,

of agendas of anxious meetings

that fail, of lost parents, children,

passports, of flying in planes

between tall buildings

not far above the ground.  

                 

What we see we see with eyes

like fingers that can play

the keys of only one octave

of six pianos side by side

that make up the electromagnetic band.

To right and left are infra ultra red

and violet waves, of radio and x,

that wash up foreign scripts

in flasks made from rare metals –

peridium, lucidanium – and alloys

unknown in our solar system,

forged ten trillion years ago

at the time of star formation

and galactic collision.

Perhaps our brains that sweat

and toil at night  

sense directly messages

from these sources

or instead, like the strange fish

that live in freezing or boiling

waters a mile deep – bioluminescent –

their large eyes comprised

of several retinal layers,

see only by their own pale light?

The light comes softly,

moving aside the night

with its alien invasions of the mind

nightmares and alarms,

resolutions, fabrications,

decisions that don’t last

and palpitations.