Glitz
Sol, the sire of life,
makes butter run.
We’re on the terrace.
Shaded. Breakfast.
Fruit and pastries. Coffee
creamed with Baileys.
Decadent. The street
beneath, still sleepy,
muses why last night
we stopped mid-road to gawp
a moonless heavens
splotched down its middle
with a billion melded suns.
A primal call to confront infinity?
Elements intuiting whence they came?
Or inculcation that the distant,
vast and barely comprehended
demands our awe?
It could, of course, be glitz -
the straining flame before us on the table,
oil oozing iridescence after rain,
a dusty shaft of sunlight through a crevice –
that lures the eye and later
we take home and,
granting our perceptions import,
flesh with meaning.
Daniel P. Stokes has published poetry widely in literary magazines in Ireland, Britain, the U.S.A. and Canada, and has won several poetry prizes. He has written three stage plays which have been professionally produced in Dublin, London and at the Edinburgh Festival.
Amethyst Review 