Alexander Lazarus Wolff: “Tracing the Periphery”
TRACING THE PERIPHERY
Late winter, the light has weakened to half its strength,
and the sky is a slab of ice. Slight
sounds: the minute percussion of raindrops—no, hail:
its patter paints the city glass.
The far rim of the universe trails along the horizon line,
where I can see only a strand of light, mid-arc,
that silvers the edges of the darkening sky.
Night carves the moon to a sickle; the city disintegrates.
I watch the last light whip and flail, glaze
the buildings with its demise as rain-snow laces
the sidewalks and sifts like sand in an hourglass
from the splits in the clouds. There is only a trace
of the day left, a fading memory of light.
Alexander Lazarus Wolff‘s writing appears at The Best American Poetry website, Poets.org, Cherry Tree, Citron Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. A recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, he teaches and studies at the University of Houston, where he holds the Inprint MD Anderson Foundation Fellowship.