There is a particular word,
lueur, for the slightly sinister

gleam at the near end of all things.
The morning that never comes.

The widow’s walk that is never
an accident. The thirteenth hour

under fluorescents in a labyrinth
of glass. The slow wringing of time

into calendars of doleful suns.
A lueur is the hope and sign

of the catheter or the cataract,
the barn half-collapsed, hinged

precariously over a picked-over
yard, the “so what” after a long

explanation on why it could not be
otherwise.