The neon purple glow of ultra-violet rays
comes first to mind, but then, I recall
the unexpected emissions of black holes,
stars so massive they collapse, bending
the universe into a blank horizon beyond
which they disappear, an invisible darkness
swallowing light, where radiation appears
to appear from nowhere. That's black light.
Pressed, I think of ink-- flat black radiance
distilled for print, a liquid light incandescent
with ideas and insights that invite stares
as stars do. Yet regarding print alone
seems wrong, like hanging a canvas
without a frame, forgetting the horse
demands a landscape, ignoring that night
is the field where stars stand, overlooking
that even a dark star assumes a universe
in which to enfold itself. The zucchini field
where we watch the night is not only a place
the path passes through, but the place creates
the path, makes passage possible, necessary,
inevitable. As interstellar space is the void
where stars arise, the distance between us
creates language, engenders speech, becomes
the luminous matter of words. The negative
space, the presence of undrawn mountains implied
within the white clouds of Chinese landscapes,
is the open, not empty, field where forces play.
The field of white we mistake for blankness
shapes darkness into words.
Eric Paul Shaffer is author of four books of poetry, including, most recently, Living at the Monastery, Working in the Kitchen (2001) and Portable Planet (2000). His work appears in ACM, American Scholar, Chicago Review, Grain, Hawai‘i Review, Malahat Review, North American Review, PRISM International, Threepenny Review, and 100 Poets Against the War. He received the 2002 Elliot Cades Award for Literature and lives on the sunset slope of Haleakalä.
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