It is a pounding permanence.

A headache of beauty

searing sharp and crinkled fearful at the edges,

as though the whole world might tear at its dotted horizon-lines and

lift up, up, up into

this dead & bitter heaven…

Here, at the edge of all things,

in the empty grasses & thoughtless trees

there is a finality, a moment of epilogue

as if everything that could and would ever be

has already come and gone, dancing its endless births and deaths

until the end of the world, and the beginning again;

until nothing else matters but

the clouds, darting

birdlike and alone

across the face

of a peace beyond knowing.