Poem: Proof

 

Proof

 

shadows crept with little aplomb

under the anemia of a filmy bulb;

the bulb a starved winter sunset,

less and less orange succulence.

never there.

 

but it was the rats nest of books,

nestled in dogears,

that feasted on tired hands

to devour their paralyzed,

insensate scholarship.

worse still, the real mice

which throbbed in the walls,

an eerie omen of sibilance.

 

below half-dead, hung eyes

some last tome of hope lay open

--vivisected, slain--

yet no cure for a tortured quest,

no Quod Erat Demonstrandum .

 

the sad only conclusion, then, being god.

god who had designed this futile math,

an impregnable Door,

with human knowledge its mere architrave.

 

to step through would be to slide,

sunset’s smallest last shadow--

forever to stretch, thinner, endless,

not quite gone, but nevertheless

never there.

 

 

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