O rare and clarifying day, 

    good day:

Your raiment of the moment washed in blue

Illumes a softened, sadder rumination

Among despairing men

Who watched each hair go grey.

Whichever course they plot they face the sun

In unimpeding drifted winter air

Lashes, squinting eyelids: unavailing

Against that ageless burst

Frigid, Promethean.

Out many miles from shore a sudden shower

A sodden shudder weeping on the sea

Mere meters wide

    a drenching isolation

A pure vertical rain

Repeating every hour

This shined and shattered shaft of splint’ring light

That draught of water from a cloudless sky

Alludes to sullen shoulders wracked with sobbing

A smudged and doubtful map

Disperses lines of flight

O rare and clarifying day,

    good day:

Your raiment of the moment washed in blue

Aloft a soft'ning shy manifestation

Engrained with faded care

Dispensing with dismay.

© 2017 George M. Wallace; all rights reserved.