[1] Another winter day is ending. Figures bent over their books deepen Into shadow at the far window. I watch a woman clad in black Suck on, deeply, a cigarette. Smoke congeals thickly in the cold air. Breathing becomes harder by a degree. That tip flickers like a beacon As does pain at cornea’s edge.

[2] On the window pane The double helix of a man’s ironed Shirt and the profile of a woman Sitting on the other side of the glass, Lit only along her edges, a corona; These moments seem to be In a code that I can’t decipher.

[1] By Lullwater, a parade of languages: A well dressed man yelling into a cell Phone in Russian, a woman with long straw Hair and bare feet walking by, talking puppy To a very young Aleutian romping In the grass, a Chinese cavalcade now – A father, and his daughter, and her son – Passes like a dragon, fishing poles in hand, And beside me this brawly bearded giant, Resting, chewing on a stalk of dry rye As a spider clothes him in silk, whispering via grass telephone again, “Learn How to loaf, and invite your soul”.

[2] As sun kamikazes below the tree line Half the lake becomes a mirror in which You can now see your reflection, Absent the angry afternoon glare, For an hour or so before the owl-darkness Ascends from the roots of the forest, Whose tree tops are now whorls of light, Which is what they tell you heaven looks like, And giving you company in this witnessing Is Gregor Samsa’s cousin, a busy writing spider Working with his spindle, spool, and shuttle, In anticipation of his holy dinner.

At these alight latitudes All afternoon wind ferries letters – Maple-five-fingered, beech-arrow-headed, ginko-fanned From the heights (So blue, so blue if you can bear to look)

To the crosshatched earth, On which you walk, Suddenly alert and alive As if your heart stuck in its bell jar Just received its southern migratory telegram,

Your arms spread at your sides (How surprisingly warm are the wine dark nebulae of mums!) feeling for long moments more like a biplane than a biped.