Deep In The Red Poem by Joshua Bantum

There’s a red light in the distance
Cutting through the trees
Leaveless, bare
The light is hindered by only
The awareness of the onlooker’s willingness to receive it.

It is drenching over the sky
Pressed tight like it’s been dressed over
The skin of the atmosphere
Sewn to fit

I have been drawn closer to the light
by my legs
Steadily paddling through the mud
Like oars breaking the fine skin of a river

The startling prevalence of the light
Beats hard from beneath the horizon,

A cliff I’ve come to
And I can peer over its dramatic arch
Letting my sight flow over its endless curves
Like a waterfall finding no end
Below in the red voids belly.

At first the hue was a transparent one
Cutting the trees out from darkness
But now in metamorphosis
It has become opaque
Stripping me of sight
Of smell
Consuming all vibrations
I cannot decipher my heartbeat
From its own
Which resembles more
The enchanted whispers the wind
Makes into infinity while it passes through time.

I can tell back into the womb
I have returned
The flesh encasings of Earth
Swallowing me whole
Back deep inside.

Its here I found these words
It is here I find everything pure
Deep in the red
Where no other impurities can exist.