Let it Shine

Would you notice a difference
if I hid my light,
removed its warmth from your skin
or stuck it in a bush,
igniting a localized conflagration--
a few moments of heat-bent, fizzling illumination?
And if I held it out,
would you come close enough
to be branded by my peculiar fantasies,
or only turn your back and look elsewhere
as the incineration creeps toward my hands?
If I extinguished it under a chalice
or whispered it out of existence,
would my outmoded technology
be missed among the encroaching fluorescence?

In The Desert

I have to cry out shout
to be heard, I write words
with my prostrate body in the sand.
(The length of the letters
six feet long but not as deep.)
The ruts, every waving line of my characters,
are tripping-places where you fall
and land in the sand, and add your lines to the message,
incomplete as you hurry away embarrassed.
You could not see the whole picture and now
you’re afraid you’ve spoiled it,
that I will be angry
because you dared to step on my words,
to come too close for shouting.
And now our rivers will never meet,
yours evaporated by your speed,
mine puddling into the short end
of an exclamation point.