The Reprieve
A week
that freezes, thaws,
and freezes again.
The skyline scales
and cracks.
Morning’s frayed
gray plumes
pull through the wreck
and the wreck in mind.
To be reminded
there’s grace
in ordinary weather,
in the reprieve
from neon
and clouds low enough
to cloud thought. Grace
in daylight, the drowse
and sway;
and how, when it’s this
thin, things barely cling
to their names. Grace
to be nameless, a form
among forms, drifting
in February glare.
Grace, too,
when windows
reflect and distort,
at night,
the shape of a room.
from A New Silence