Illumination

Always   there is something more to know

      what lingers      at the edge of thought

awaiting illumination       as in

      this secondhand book       full

of annotations     daring the margins in pencil

a light stroke as if

      the writer of these small replies

meant not to leave them    forever

      meant to erase

evidence of this private interaction

      Here     a passage underlined   there

a single star on the page

      as in a night sky       cloud-swept and hazy

where only the brightest appears

      a tiny spark     I follow

its coded message    try to read in it

the direction of the solitary mind

      that thought to pencil in

a jagged arrow   It 

      is a bolt of lightning

where it strikes

      I read the line over and over

as if I might discern

      the little fires set

the flames of an idea    licking the page

how knowledge burns      Beyond

       the exclamation point

its thin agreement     angle of surprise

there are questions   the word why

So much is left

      untold     Between

the printed words     and the self-conscious scrawl

      between   what is said and not

white space framing the story

      the way the past      unwritten

eludes us   So much

      is implication      the afterimage

of measured syntax     always there

      ghosting the margins that words

their black-lined authority

      do not cross     Even

as they rise up   to meet us

      the white page hovers beneath

silent    incendiary     waiting

 by Natasha Trethewey

From MONUMENT © 2018 Natasha Trethewey.