Lustre

A noon like any other—when at my feet
a pitch-black feather cracked a slit of an eye.

And soon that eye was level with my own;
I held it to the light and watched its all-
consuming iris-pupil glint with ore.

And even in the midday sun, I felt
a chill—as though some nimble midnight wave
had trickled through to this world from the deep.

Could it be true that just as light contains
its colours, darkness promises its own?
Is light’s monopoly no less opaque?

Yet like a teardrop brusquely wiped away,
the feather was blown clean out of my hand.

What was I spared? The dark is in the wind.