Early Afternoon, Having Just Left The Chapel Of San Francesco Poem by James Brasfield

Radiant the delayed calmness,
—Do you feel it, I said. —Yes, you said,

of what only each can know,
kernel of radiance, the globo terrestre
of a water drop, not the passing adaptations
of canonical light, but seconds stilled—

our hearts beating through the moments—centuries
of the next tick of a watch relieved,
a world enough in time to imagine
Piero walk to work across cobblestones

toward a completion, his close attention
to sunlight passing through shadows
owned by the sharp angles of buildings,
sunrays warming what they touch.

Piero, first a painter, is not a monk.
He will make what welcomes light
a source of light: slow the day
he will add lucent black wings

to white feathers of the magpie
ever alight on a roof-edge.

I found a feather on a stone, feather I thought
from the angel's wing, that arc of light
held aloft in descent, shared with us
and Constantine in his dream.

I think of a white egret returning home near
the high creek, through unwavering
evening light, to sleep, sleep at Sansepolcro,
where we were headed in a rental car.