I am beholden to the month of June
like a reliquary where a larkspur sky
contains the blue woodgrain of lost stars
in a sacred exploit of shaded form bleeding
light from the purification of my time here –

As if I am the offering to this place,
this landscape of harsh beauty, a litmus
of the blue-black night on a wide open
horizon, I hold my light in ascension, to be
present here – now above the ramadas

Of my own body as this resting sky of my
oblations break to the crease of a Lapis blue
ether, like flux in the canted road ahead
among dogbane and saltbush, bringing me
closer to the cardinal refuge of night

© K. James Ribble