Magazine Poem

Some sort of light
described as chaste,
track over to

some sharply rendered
detail, maybe an object entire
or even an animal,

the image tweaked
just so with an unexpect-
ed adjective,

one from, say, the lusty
world of fine dining. Next,
a cryptic but flatly

toned reference to a bygone,
probably dead, beloved creature,
person or animal,

though probably not the
same animal from the second
stanza, if there happens

to be one there. Light again,
and this is the same thing as before,
just as chaste, but most

likely fading or falling or
diffusing or doing something similarly
dissipative. The private grief

probably starts to grow
lustrous here, civilization's a big
mess and nothing for it, war, blogs, etc.,

though the little private pain
will seem to have been assuaged
in a little way by the little tremor

of the poem itself. Finally,
the deal is sealed with another sharp detail
jump cut, an objective

correlative, as they say, that
shows you're tough, mostly poetic
instead of too sappy or intellectual.