Читать книгу Ordinary Time - Michael D. Riley - Страница 13

She knows.

She tries to tell the traffic

moiling through the blowing surge,

peach-pink streetlights

just coming on, fuzzy with snow.

They cannot hear her

for their radios and icy wipers.

The snow collects light

despite the growing dusk.

She heralds its glowing

reflection, its hoarded joy,

sun and moon somewhere else,

just gray light enough

to release my window panes

and set embroidered animals

dancing. An old engine,

the radiator steams

beneath the windows.

I fill one chair.

My angel of the sill

welcomes me also

with her wooden horn,

but I am not the one

she has waited for

seed to split to trunk

in that wide stand of pine

where the snow also blew

and melted, the life

before this life

of paint and jubilatio,

further intervention

of the shaping hand,

sanding fine as skin

to another’s touch,

strokes of expression

doweled and ribboned,

transplanted here.

She practices her song

too perfectly to be heard.

She teaches me to wait,

to praise with her the traffic

inching past, attend

to the song of silence,

the song of cold

that brings the fire

that never is consumed.

Her wooden cheeks

never empty of breath

call us all day.

The snowy light

has almost reached

her shoulders, turning her

horn silver. The light

arrives on waves of music.

Soon it will reach me.