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Collected Poetry

    (rd king dot net)
poetry and digital art

In California

  Street Lamps in Daylight 


As if held captive to its own aspiration
the utility pole rose into an open space
and there, by design, conspired with the assembly
of powerlines and street lamp arms to affix that layer
of life upon itself—life without life, ardent and enthused.
Into that emptiness, unclaimed, unchecked,
ungarnered, they grew.  From the left-turn lane
where no living thing could boast of
an indigenous presence, and from where
even the tailwind of passing cars
was aggressive, and unsettling, and dangerous,
I could see through the powerlines and beyond
their space to the sky, where small planes
struggled to fly away and every journey
was a very great and perilous one untethered
by a footing or beneficence—as if the purpose
of its aloof existence was to spark the visionary,
briefly; in that to gather this information was
enough by itself, no matter how stony or senseless
it might have felt, but just to carry it home
and ponder it was the destination of the journey.




 
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