Following the Wake

(Written in the early morning, February 15)

How long
since I have seen this light?
White light, mingled only
with the blue of latent evening,
early morning,
daylight shifts receding
into twilight. Slips th'abysmal
thread of lucid admiration
onto fingers white with plying
river waters. Under chariots,
under bridges run the tendrils,
gellid fingers, run the marvels
of a winter early dying,
of a February morning,
of returning, of the past.

Of the past, and of the passing,
as the snow is briefly falling
over aquaduct and thicket,
spent the summer briefly waking,
spent the autumn bearing berries,
spent the winter spent, and making
up for time lost in the turning
of a tertiary season.
'Tis the season.

Winter, call me.

Snow

Shh, don’t think in words.
Sense of wonder, Marion.
Snow.

Snow flying down long
stairs in the metro, and now
fleeting in cast light
across black counters
so near the window
that outside
enters.

Glass
no more exists than the idea of glass,
as in between in and out,
out,
out where cold is.

Out, where ice so soft
You smile to feel it land on your lips
(red, swollen, cherub rose-hips)
falls in wind, in wind, in wind,
in sound and street

until

idea of panes, invisible,
impenetrable,
unreal,
intervenes.
Snow still falls,
but silent,
immersed in black counter reflected
to the final strains of
California Soul,

so near the window
that outside
enters.