Perception

In the climactic anarchy of sex—
When the various passions are
Kaleidoscopic shards
Of colored glass,
scattered on a marver
For the gaffer
To roll a molten gob through—
Then disorder is at its most understandable.
Night lightning flashes,
Illuminating distant hills;
There’s a gasp of perception.
All the anarchy assembles
Into a sudden, coherent shape.
The forking, electric wires vanish.
Darkness falls again.
Groping, searching for a spark—
What lit
This planet’s immense and antres chamber,
Provided that brief, enlightening flame?
Later, when reflecting on that quick glimpse,
One already muddled,
She finds in it
Fatalism and independence,
Care, instinct, and hedonism:
The growth and transience
Of two human lives.

David Murphy won the Seaton Fellowship for Creative Writing in 2006.  He served as the editor-in-chief of Touchstone, a literary magazine published by Kansas State University.  He has published most recently in The Fourth River, Papyrus, and Saint Somewhere.  He lives and writes in a pueblo near Tepic, Mexico.