open, sometimes wedge shut, mute
the street noise, sometimes light-strewn
& sometimes a tree, never willow
here, but birch or maple, some kind of ever
-green where a bird might build what we call
house, but really just twigs, debris, strands
carried off. Where it might nest down sometimes
a wind-eroded depression, sometimes an alcove
& shelter from wind. Might distance between
skylight & light surface. & how,
So, all we know: water seeks its own
level, argues against what names
flattened out lonely or unremarkable. Every word
shutters what little day we might let in, slat
& line a fierce stance against lean & slope—that uneven
acrossness. Then the emptier rooms we’ve known
become the only particular places scaled to name
what we’ve called temporary, proportional
& cluttering. But if sometimes empties out
by mere breath & clears away the piled-up,
hauls out to the alley
what might’ve been, then
on purpose—all of that rubbing off, & ink—that printing,
our fingers. Sometimes stains. Sometimes insists
take matters into your own hands, & the streets
empty on time & sometimes sweeps
up into little clouds that will settle
elsewhere. Sometimes dissolves
the sand winter laid down & the pattern
we traced in it & named our days a landscape
stretched between here & there. Or nothing
happens here, even urgency in the untidy
season between pleads, a note on the counter try
to put winter away. Where sometimes might
terrace or approach, tucked away
becomes the set-back of the building
-line then livable cloud. Then the dimming
day well-worn stretches tree-line
overhead or windbreak up ahead
& either way a narrowing that
closing in once meant to scale wide the sky.
