These are dark times,
Open the window, the sun shines today for 15 hours 10 minutes.
And windy,
a piece of lettuce is blowing off my lunchplate.
Gesundheit,
we say to the sneeze heard through the open window.
On my summer reading list is “In Defense of Ardor”
and intention to pronounce Zagajewski
Ardor — heat of passion or desire —
in its air of noblity,
I hear nostalgia, and an extended hand
to the future
— to carry a torch for someone, for some thing,
enduring strange beauty in words
the scratch of magic, otherness, faith
to carry a torch for carrying forth