Writing by Will Staveley. Image by Will Staveley.
“It was alarming to see it’s still dark. And it will be strange to have lunch in the dark. But you still have to get on with your day.”
California resident after wildfires in September 2020 which turned the sky orange
I
The weather system has convoluted
and pours rain on all, falls in air
the numberless plies of the folding sky
Inwards, into singular darkness
As the road ahead can be seen to its end
I pause in my room, towards a risen day
I thank the invitation to go away
My friends on the other strange side to this world
Scratching my head a moment, tar their
Faces.
II
Rain remaining its source unmoving
The annihilating plies of the tearing sky
So why shouldn’t I turn from water to why
“Here, wine, here is wine!”
What is taken back at the inward behind
Reminiscences of friends and the words their hulls
While all the while the world swarms away.
III
Trees, planted in the eastward past
claws of new twig to once burst out
They try to shift the clotted effects
And sayings of men, that the sun and moon, two
Are also fleeing for comfort new.
Flying things, down to the tree beside
And I think I have heard them saying aside
“It wasn’t that there weren’t alternatives,
But we like the potential here the most
Yet no matter the message our silence gives
He wets his eyes from the raining post.”
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