Ambiguous Privilege

Caught shooting the sun’s tangent
through the smoked filters
of his instrument,
he gazes from inside flame.

Sky bearing a red and gold canvas west,
he postcards thoughts across created distance,
heart to soul, his fingerprints
all over a vase of fragments.

Petitioning the muse with ink, he vectors
a tonic inside an age-spotted hand,
inside pulse, craft attaching arteries
to shadow edge as twilight slips out of roots.

He imagines his hilltop bench
a captain’s chair facing the horizon’s mirage,
soft wind rippling dead calm, dry rot waiting
for the tide, the ambiguous privilege of being

perceptive inscribing sharp notes, stanza
to stanza, as chaos riptides closer.
The poem’s red sax flaring an anthem,
thermals blooming clouds as the memory

of an old dream hangs like incense above
a yellow vase. He lathers layers of ink over
each caesura, some distance from leaving
his scars to the weight of stones.