The Victorian Violet Press & Journal

Under Glass

A story opens behind your eyes
Inarticulate chapters
Of joy and horror
And small midnight hungers
In which you wake
Knowing why the universe is
And what made it so

Your thoughts beat
Against the clear glass
Windows to your soul
On aching wing
Trapped in a filament
Language too fragile
To encompass us

And you want to say what I would say for you
If my words could hold enough
Of anything

Frustrated
You exhale a caterpillar
A plain, drab thing with no species
Encased in silk
Others recognize
As poor consolation
For connection

With an eager breath
I inhale new form
Some might see as silhouette
Of what we meant to say
But it does not suffice
Cannot take flight
Despite the way I felt it

Hatch upon my tongue
And wait
In damp expectant silence
 
 
 
 
Space-Time

Our sun is not a dimple on a sheet
But a mote in frozen infinity
Time pulled tight to its core
Like our flesh, pulled tight to our bones
Every thought pressed into marrow
The heavy keel of our conscious selves
Draws light in polarized waves
Through our eyes

Which yearn look out
Past the blue of our own warm seas
We peer through eon’s red tides
Measured in years, in centuries, millennia ago
And space, in the grip of gravity, staggers
Loathe to loose this moment we can name

Into floods, borne away
From the weight of navigation
That carries news of Earth
Bound as an orb to its sun
How it turned, once, at a fortuitous pace

So history eddied and slowed
And we believed ourselves the center of everything
A single, massive core of sentience
Pooled in this singular place

From which only heroes and gods escape
As constellations
And formidable light

That refuses to bow
Before time
 
 
 
 

 
Rae Spencer

is a writer and veterinarian living in Virginia. Her poetry has appeared online and in print, receiving Pushcart Prize nominations in 2009 and 2010. She can be found online here.

 Artwork ~ Martin Johnson Heade