Tin Ceiling

I am no storyteller –
yet I tell myself this story
endlessly.
The lights in the evening windows
are truths
gloaming
and tell again of a place,
where underneath the geometry of a tin ceiling
– before over-painting and time
muted its sharp lines –
the smallest is there,
a composite of a coming supernova,
a minute solar flare twisting inside,
waiting
for the right time to show itself.

Even if entirely too much time
was wasted
on the no sense
the nonsense
of unimportance –
when I watch the charcoal smudge of buildings –
outlined in sunlight
outlined in fog
outlined in the grime
of life-
and the yellow-tinged weeds
where the burnt house once stood,
I know it is there,
underneath the tin ceiling.

So the story is never forgotten.