At whose foot a pot of gold

by M. Frost

i.
We are born of water and light, both descending
from the fractured heavens: the darkness on one side
almost complete, hazed with a heartbeat like thunder.
Then the storm, as we emerge, light
dazzling through pupils wet with amnion.

This the corona, the space curved pink between our mother’s legs,
the threshold, and after we cross, air, air,
only air.

ii.
White contains no colors; black absorbs all and so reflects none.
That’s the trick—the light we see is the light that cannot occupy,
the trick is the green leaf contains every color but green, green is the light
eschewed, spit out, the particle reflected upon an arc, undulating.

And so white light reflected through the prism of a drive
down the Schuylkill at four pm on a Saturday,
this light that is the high cumulus of a life moving between
thunder and blue air, this light, which reflects from that infinite point
which itself contains no colors, and so refracts them all,
ruptures into the circle half inside the earth and half without,
half-seen in fantastic pastels.

iii.
The car hits the end of the rainbow, as mist dissolves
into sunny mist and all the world is white again.
Before the fluttering Artogeia, pierid pair white against the green,
before the light snatched on to the next arcing raindrop,
before the trees shedding summer like water from the tips of their leaves,
the road resumes, apparition and confirmation.

This is it; this moment the pot of gold:
butterflies and gold-red leaves that have
opened to accept the green, to hold it in,
fiercely.