Creative Submission to the Philomathean Society
CONDENSATION

I have experience in the silence of passage.
The trip along these roughened stones
Has taught me that time is sallower than art,
That the prayer tongued to a source of light
Away from human breath, the knit and white air
Of sky and clouds, that backs and eyes and arms
Become cold for no reason.

Store-bought farewells are made of the same air,
The same condensation of everybody's nothingness.
Look for us as our own speech
Becomes these clouds. (Of course, most of you will
Think this was something else.)

The brick held longer than I thought it would.
Longer than any poem for December first, the
Snow worded to the page and the ground worth more
Than any lottery of silks. That
Frozen breath was parted white without a comb,
And it knew it would darken with the time,
Like a cup of tea, where a spoon could sit
And how it made a poet of you, the branches,
Yes, the charm, the wet plaits of your hair against the pillow.

The dogs sleeping.

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