Palimpsest

The moon comes up each night.
And yet what communal airs
Frame the flattened sphere
Right now with random flares

Copied from a sun whose garnet
Plunge beneath the sea,
Whose setting fills the sky
With a secondary setting

For other meanings to appear
In its subsidiary layers,
A pentimento that the crimson
Of the evening tears

From the solar dust
Below the smoldering horizon,
Volcanoes of the day
Which billow in the clouds

And xerox still the orange rust
Of day that boils beneath the dusk.

December 14th, 2020