a light made fast

Since Beginning
itself begins the one death one is
born toward
and will not bear,
the light was

again at once

closed over. Closed over at
once in the opening was every

other look
the skin might have had.
When cleared of that first

flutter across it was the newly
brought-to-light skin,
the shift to its
second light had been
too quick to see.

In the run at once
into it and then

on,
the first could not now be gone
back to.
Back would from then on have to be

a light made fast.

-- James McMichael, lines from "Back" in Capacity

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