My fingers pretend patterns onto the window,
wings of eagles, weeping willows.
I have stood before this window
minutes over hours, hours minutes—
imagine time in the palm,
a globe of peonies woven though hollow.
The winter falls around freezing its season
the way chimes give the room a stillness
when the door is slit open…
a suspense of metal over the threshold
beyond an empty place,
curtains unflung at the sill,
the present moment just beginning to end.
On the edge of day a silver image
is fraying and leaving a trail,
unwound fibers the color of marbles.
A wooden swing left empty
wavers lightly under a ceiling of cloud,
after the rise, before the fall,
like the hand of a clock
between two hours.
The landscape framed by the window
is the world—
thick-coming thunder is echoing.
It was bound to happen this way, too soon
to assume the color of the sky
one day could tell the future.
After the rain there is no release—
what was overcast remains cast over,
white shivers an underbelly of white.
Flattened sheets behind the trees
create a makeshift theater—
all stage-drapes, scenery, costume, stage.
The change itself seems to last;
the wearing is unworn—
a world firmed by its own tearing
the way an age is made.