August 2: End of Day, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, "Eraser"

At the end of this day, this really good day, I want to share a poem with you from a friend of mine, poet Ricardo Pau-Llosa.  I took a workshop from him several years ago, and, one day, we went on a quilt-hunting trip in the wilds of the Upper Peninsula together.

The poem comes from Ricardo's book The Mastery Impulse.

Saint Marty hopes you're having as good a night as he's having.

Eraser

Six-tiered snow had taken the field
for good, hushed its grey felt
into memory.  But the chalk's winter
spread is also the seed--all those words
once, now dust packed into its airy tufts
of wool.  The blanched equation,
the errant chore, all here,
gene scrambled and waiting for more
white molecules to be swept
into its flat web.
How the grazing fingers smoke
the residual ghosts out.
Furrowed coffin in the teacher's hand,
you mirror the making and killing of it all.
So, signs finally are like breath,
or a lady's vanity blushing against her pages,
or shallow ruins, or all those autumn revenues
that teach love of what is frail,
those fertile city lights, dawn dying white.

Good friend, great poet