On my walk home the sun sets over the power plant and tints everything sepia.
The world is filtered through honey or burnt glass.

A paper cup full of coffee steams in my palm as the smoke stacks steam beyond.
Both are clean, white cylinders that bleed their whiteness into the air

It is milk billowing up through water. It is a shifting flock of doves.

The sun casts spidery shadows of the stacks onto the smoke so each has a ghostly brother
Still, sharp, straight, unmoving
A blue hole through the gold veil, the veil sliced into ribbons by an unseen knife
Butter for tomorrow morning’s toast

It seems that the shadow should bleed out like a watercolor
That the blue hole should move like ink with the twisting steam, stain the smoke and diffuse with it into the yellow sky

But light is direct, and so are shadows
Steam passes through both, indifferent and unchanged.