A poem is not a mirror but a sky – Thade Correia, “Manifestos: Aphorisms on Poetry”

The closed system of Tuesday resists all

your efforts. Look for something, anything,
images, words, irregular pulse, rhyme.

White space cloaks notebook pages. A gel pen
leaves only scratches. Weak, pale light seeps in

from somewhere, probably the east, source of
yellow, source of wisdom, source of dawn. Clouds

turn gauzy, turn gray. You remember your
own family’s four directions: the cross

at meals and Mass. While you do other things,
the sky splits, like a seam of cotton pants.

You can’t see blue, but you do see light, bright
enough for sunglasses. Clouds imitate

yesterday’s sky.