Erasing

Coal-black board,
a vast expanse of midnight sky,
once dotted by fragmented constellations
of scholar’s sutras—jeweled teachings marked
in brilliant, powder-white.

Smoke now smudged
in long, arced streaks across the dark.
Chalk fades and moves in embolden borders
from top to bottom in thick eraser tracks.
It’s as if God had taken his hand,
broad and perfectly angled,
and it pressed firmly against the depths of night
to wipe all tiny, diamond suns from view
and leave us with his prints of cloudy grey.
Neither dark nor light would exist:
only the murky moments of pre-dawn
on a sunless, foggy day.

--Alison T. davis