En Plein Air

Watercolor in grisaille—intemperate,

fugitive tints the eyes invent—

those hours pass in array, a funeral march,

the procession of the happy-to-be-alive.

In retrospect, furrowed spring

and the rough pillars of late summer

stretched across the skin of December,

sheet-snows wandering the trackless past.

Things unsaid too often said.

The street’s old houses took the shock

of their century to the next. How long

before the brick unsaid itself?

That muttering of swifts outstayed

their unwritten lease; the hair-thin glass

one morning cracked the disputed border

of electric current buried in the walls.

The old world lay in house arrest.

The shadow came, left, came again.