Early summer sun’s

                                    kaleidoscope through

the flowering plum

            makes it hard to focus on

                                                the page I’m reading

            like a console in

                        a sixties sci-fi spaceship

little lights turn on memories

                                    of driving south fast

through the tablelands

                        bands of radiance

            between the gums and me

still a kid on the back seat

            dazzled

                        :  which one to hold still?

            in these passages half-lit

by the gauzy light

                        of becoming what might have been

what I’m thinking is so                       scat

                                    a train beside the highway

            a line of bright windows

crossing soft dark of the fields

            words burst into silence

mind probes the space like a tongue

                                                unable to leave                        the gap

            alone   the idea not

un-named but yet to be named

                         can such even now

                                    be celebrated —

            light and shade not light

and not shade              light and darkness

                        light and shade                        and darker light

                                    what’s the word for that

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Komorebi, December 2025