Pluto’s Secrets

All the flamey fumy light contained
so that metallic puddles clang
on the sea’s edge.

The squib of the sun makes everything rare.

Did I know – the world
peeling open in pink, umber and orange
that in this smallest demarcation

the act of turning, my back to the light –
I would trawl such colours
Pluto’s secrets

a place of bruise and burn and stain
steeped in the stubbed-out shade
flaring before the dark.

Denise McSheehy