black ballerinas
of feathered acclaim –
swim as ten thousand
prayers
come to light
songs of surrender –
psalms of just now
I knew
as you knew
where the night
would fall down

to swirl
as a memory
almost forgot –
when held for too long
in the gentle
somehow
scratched into cedar
carved into word –
laced by the leaving
to turn
one more time

the dawn into
slowing –
a pausing of truths
swept as a shutter –
of black angel wings
– one in their beating
eternities here
are folded the sky
– as a rush
into flight

. . .