Contrarieties

Two blue suns against a smear
Of brushed-on yellow cloud appear

When I close my blinded eyes
Against the lilac-orange skies

Of sunset in the tropics:
The brain invariably picks

The reverse of what it sees
For its inner memories:

An exuberance of growth
In the jungle creates both

Fragrance on the evening breeze
And a hotbed of disease

In the rotting forests of the sun:
As cosmic transmigration

Is loose enough to posit
A position and its opposite,

Such constant vacillation frees
The world to waive the seas:

Believe in visions though we may,
They work as well the other way.

Tippet Alley
August 31st, 2003

Kailua
September 11th, 2021