SPRING LIGHT

In the big architecture of the afternoon
there is nothing which does not seem
to cast itself into the infinite air
and somehow to set itself down
right where it just was, an ongoing memorial
of seagulls screeching at budded branches,
the silver lake across the highway
and the orchid’s silver roots at the window,
a loose wind from the traffic
luffing the nets on the tennis courts.
I can’t help feeling
there is another kind of afternoon
that wants to be seen and known
but that I can’t figure out where to look.
A few white planes fly straight across a wet silk sky,
an excavator sorts a few scrap-iron hills,
four red lights blink atop the John Hancock building
among countless grey buds out my window.
Quietly and swiftly, white pigeons come forth
from the railway underpass, sparse bits of magazines in their wake.
A string of cloud breaks loose, turning
pale green, purple, grey, in the light between
a few glass buildings far away. Noiseless sheer water
trembles around the dock’s pillars
where a flock of seagulls has just gathered,
all facing the same direction.
Each thing is proof only
that it can’t be found, with muddy grass
shuddering among trees’ long shadows
and white spring light, gone so quickly
that it seems always we are too early,
that it has not yet arrived.

–Cameron Cocking

Cameron Cocking lives and works in Chicago where he is a Writing Advisor at the University of Chicago. He received his MFA in poetry from UMass Amherst in 2024. He was the recipient of the 2023 Daniel and Merrily Glosband Fellowship, selected by Mónica de la Torre. His work has previously appeared in Conjunctions.