Jean Hollander
An SOS of Light
Packing their eggs
Alaskan salmon leap
to blinding sunset,
plunge down water’s glare
and dying fireflies
flicker and spark
bright tinders
from the grass
as in high alps
thin shimmering air
is drawn more quickly:
rasped kaleidoscope
of sun and crags,
butterflies and larks,
cow’s cud of amethyst and grass,
of bluebells, violets, and daffodils,
clouds sieved with snow
or water when it drops
and slows to aniline
in vertigo of color
or like the radiance
an epileptic sees
before he totters—
falls—
a golden turbulence of leaves
are we now to each other
