Ripples

Picture this: darkest draped cloth, magnesium powder flash
from a match, & slight smoke quickly drifting over figures
for forever or for ever how long that image may last.

Film is liquid & digital oceans flow, rise, the archival
jostling its flotsam then disappearing again
under so many present currents happening at once.

Earth-ark, all the world over weather has the sound
of loose change, that luck of found money versus dollars
falling through vanishing bottom lines.

Imagine its cracks, craters in close-up, for the gravel bed,
the dust-gray with occasionally some mica-shine
as raindrops plop up from asphalt like nickels & quarters.

What dimes dash between out of reach for so many
suddenly sun-baked under oily shimmers creating vast skies?

Here they have M-16-sheen, there, rocket head gloss,
but can become blindingly white from black & blue punishing.

Oh, say can you see—
please sing us beyond this, what is slipping through fingers,
storm-clear, dawning, life, life, life.

Resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, https://thestephenmeadchromamuseum.weebly.com/, Stephen Mead is a retiree whom, throughout all his pretty non-glamorous jobs still found time for writing poetry/essays and creating art. Occasionally he even got paid of this. Currently he is trying to sell his 40-year backlog of unsold art before he pops his cogs, https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/stephen-mead