A face appears like a mask upon the edge of normal.

Pause. A balloon-tied finger points: What’s coming out of that man’s mouth?

One sentence. The black ceiling sky observed by flashlight.

We discuss the images, lay out the remains.

Familiar. The din of paper and pen, piano music in a snowglobe.

The sands are pounded by metal detectors, collision

Of lobsters dropped upon the rock.

I see life in the cloudburst future, set upon a fresh horizon.

I’m here to talk. The dew settles and I’ve come in under fog,

under white flag hypnosis, what paragon of light ventured here to find us?

Where does it rest, where does it lead in place of this absence?

What will take us on its wings, upon its back into the next century?

I talk of scales, spectrums, of gauges and paces, hustle, ambition

and all its lengths, the phases of work, splices of reverie, what energies leak and escape

Coalesce, and contaminate while we sit and desire not to feel.

I’m here to talk. It appears we’re joined by what was once called Impossible.

But our proof, our confirmations, through thought and investigation, have gone unfulfilled,

yet I know there are riders upon what devices, upon what meditations,

Upon the crown of idea, here, we are looking down instead of up, yet

we are out of sight.

Aaron Wiegert has been publishing poetry for 17 years. His poems have appeared in journals and anthologies around the U.S., Canada, Scotland, England, Austria, Australia, and Nigeria.