Lantern at the Rim of Dusk
The sun goes down like a sealed wound:
scarlet pressed into the canyoned sky.
Tumbleweed clings to the slope,
its dry ribs rasping in wind.
You carry the lantern low.
Its flame trembles:
a small animal cupped in glass.
We walk the ridge where dust remembers
every passing boot,
every leaving.
Cedar lifts its dark perfume
into the cooling air.
A whippoorwill threads its single note
through the widening blue.
The lantern throws a breathing circle
at our feet.
Light loosens stones from shadow,
warms the knuckles of earth.
Beyond it, night assembles:
silver syllables in tall grass,
the soft grammar of distance.
We do not speak.
We let the dark pronounce us.
Somewhere beyond the rim,
morning is already gathering
its pale, deliberate fire.
David Anson Lee
David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and a poet, whose writing grows from the intersection of landscape and memory. He creates because language allows him to listen more closely: to wind moving through grass, to silence after loss, to the subtle music beneath ordinary days. Poetry slows the world enough for meaning to surface.