The Cusan Sky

When color fails and sepia ascends,
it is not a lesser kingdom taking the throne—
it is the throne admitting
it was always borrowed light.

Blue steps down first,
humblest of the courtiers,
having pretended sky long enough.
Then green,
then every noon-loud hue,
filing out like a court dismissed
from a kingdom never theirs.

What ascends is not a color at all
but the confession beneath color—
the brown of old earth,
old paper,
old bone,
the ground from which all colors briefly rose,
waiting
the way silence waits
under every word
that thought itself necessary.

This is not dusk.
Dusk still bargains with the sun.
This is the sky
relinquishing every borrowed name,
becoming itself
by what it is no longer—

not red,
not gold,
not the day you expected,
but the day before adjectives,
when the eye is asked to see
as the mind is asked to pray:
through unknowing.