Clarity’s Impermanence

Clarity’s Impermanence  

That moment: you know it, when,

back in from the sleet and mud

under your boot soles, whose rubber

knuckles are choking so you

ride on the surface of the slush

that some plunge in the night has roughed

thick and solid, and that’s just

the deck.  What about the whole

path down to the truck, down

where it all waits to be cleaned,

patient as a Guernsey in her wet

perfume.  Or that moment

when, back in and breathing

the warm dry rise of radiator dust

you reach for something to clean

the streaks on  your glasses—bits

of tree bark (what?) and pricks

of bubbles that look like earl April

rain but really they’re just more

of February, they’re thumbing a ride

out of the cold that made them, they’re

a dimple on the lens. And you rub them

off passively.  And when the room,

whose desk lamp and old photos rush

at you like company arriving, you tuck

your hair in and tidy something

because you’ve seen it, you’ve seen,

finally out of the sleet and long freeze,

a purpose for it all, though like any

secret you can’t tell, you can’t,

and you’d die if you did.