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.