Afterglow

Summer nights are a good time to head up to the roof. The air is moving, and the light too. Moving away from us. Like summer.

Certainties—truth, beauty, and belief—
go in and out of focus. Mostly out.
Occasional flickers sheet a sky turned dull,
lit up by little else than recollection.
Life is lived both
according to the memory of the flash
and in the dimness of the aftermath.
The tide goes out; comes in.
The light fades low again.
The raw wound of the crater fills with green.
But ah, the afterglow.
And oh,
the undertow.

"The Afterglow," Rachel Hadas