Matinal
The darting of light starts narrow on the edge
of the neighborhood, down at the world
being anywhere but here. It’s not yet sunlight
though it’s light of the sun,
pinprick light, needle light, blade light.
It lasts less time than it took to write:
sun-bulge, arc-eye, blister on the road
grown larger as I stand. Day cures sleep
of dreams. The one awake has eaten the sleeper.
Each day’s like that, cannibal of all others.
Robert Lunday is the author of the memoir Disequilibria: Meditations on Missingness (University of New Mexico Press, 2023), Gnome, a lyric essay (Black Sun Lit, 2017), and Mad Flights, a collection of short poems (Ashland Poetry Press, 2002). Lunday lives with his wife, Yukiko, in rural Japan, with horses.