ebon sequoia
Those twin sanctuaries, beyond the trespass of metaphor,
deny the frailty of language,
for they are tinctured in the hush of rain-drenched earth—
that solemn, breathing brown
where creation resumes without announcement.
Beneath resolute arches they abide,
and lashes, placed with an elegance unstudied,
seem less arranged than inevitable—
as though symmetry itself
had relinquished the burden of perfection in their favor.
Within them dwells no fragile innocence,
but a luminous constancy—
a quiet allegiance to life
untouched by the corrosion of the world.
When joy alights, they do not blaze—
they glimmer,
like distant stars acquainting themselves with delight.
And when displeasure stirs,
it is not declared, but understood—
a sovereign silence before which language withdraws.
She conceals nothing.
Truth, unguarded, resides there—
serene in its exposure,
untroubled by witness.
And when sleep, gentle and irrevocable, claims her,
and those living constellations close upon themselves,
the world inclines—
not in absence, but in reverence—
as though time, for a fleeting mercy, forgets its command.
I do not watch to possess,
nor to decipher—
but to behold that rarest stillness
where being asks nothing of becoming.
What undiscovered immensities
dare inhabit such quiet depths?
And when at last they turn upon me—
in that unassuming, unassailable brown—
I do not fall;
I am drawn,
as though some ancient gravity
had long since inscribed my surrender.
There is no loss in this descent,
no disarray—
only a yielding so complete
it resembles return.
For within their measureless interior
abides an adoration neither born nor given,
but remembered—
as though stardust, in some distant epoch,
had once known itself alive.
They endure, not to be worshipped,
but simply to remain—
patient as constellations
that outlast the names imposed upon them.
No hand, however devoted,
could hope to render them—
for what refuses boundary
cannot be held in form.
It would require eternity
merely to begin,
and even then,
one would grasp only the echo
of their unspoken truth.
For she is no mere constellation—
but the quiet architecture of infinity itself.
And those two,
which hold the fragile fabric of my spacetime intact,
remain—
impossibly,
eternally,
beautifully—
brown.
gritty hazel
frank atlas