Rembrandt's Eyes

Written by Grace Maselli

To forget his eyes is

to unsee

cardinals in sudden

drops

the falling knives from fixed

points to a failing

branch or

from the sky

flying left

to right across chartreuse,

a color made by Grenoble monks

of France

The chiaroscuro of sadness

and change:

It will never be

the same

broken set of rules,

though memory will

apportion itself for dramatic effect

A masterwork

of darkness left,

and a fixation on

light that gets through

to something unable

to reverse itself no matter what

in the slight

of regrets

in the etching

of weightless fingers

left with nothing more to do

than sway

above a delicacy of

fading bones