Voice
from the grain

of the forest bought

It would have made no difference who
commanded us in those first hours . . .
                                —veteran, invasion of Normandy, 1944

Child with a chip of mirror in his eye
Saw the world ugly, fled to plains of ice
Where beauty was the Snow Queen’s promises,

Long ago I found a seed,
And kept it in a glass of water,
And half forgot my dim intent

Piece by piece I seem
to re-enter the world: I first began

a small, fixed dot, I still can see

Their dream decelerates our spinning planet
one millimeter-per-second per century
until they have matched velocity with us

There is less and less difference
between your shadow
and the shadow inside you

They return in desirable colors of the season,
whether casually or stupidly, to simplify the garden
of its sweetest shoots and tips, though I have set out

It is possible that he is not a boy at all?
By this I mean, or meant last night with the noise
keeping me up as it does these days, I'm foggy

The bread and the candle: pale leftovers
         from the last milling, the last box of singular suns.

There will be no more questions, no more serving you at sundown.