The dull little stones are keeping themselves to themselves, as stones do.
The painter is brushing his teeth as normal and surveying the rampancy below;
the stones stare back at what he knows.
The painter is made of snow and ashen breath,
except that the latter has that silly sheen of mint now.
The stones are made of dumb sparks from the sun’s slow plow.
The stones are a river of gray-and-brown light that always flows
beneath the stupid brains of the windows;
the windows remember nothing and then that goes too.
A swallow breaks the air and then puts it back together as it moves,
as the sly dark sheen of its shadow flows on the stones.