Slow Light In the half-light of dawn, the tracery of trees against the sky; cold treachery in black; all the world seems flat as though reflected in a glass, back-lit, where laughing faces turn to one another and then move on. Along the silent street the ancient light of stars reflects upon -- at last -- the solid flat of place after the nothingness of space that slow light twinkled through. A foot can step upon a star resting on an ice-slick street and then move on. The oily light collects its rainbowed self before the footstep's echo fades. As though reflected in a glass tree-shadows stir against the flat half-light; and in the softening east the morning moves; there rises west reflected on the clouds, the purple glim. It's time the stars were turning in. And there behind the empty glass your face revolves; the last light dims; I see the darker side of space: a window empty of your face. Sharon Kourous |