Joseph Massey

A WINDOW IN NEW ENGLAND


Noun by noun dusk draws
down night, a singular thing-
lessness, an open
syllable pronouncing lack.
How breath alone becomes sight.

*

Call it November
the mountain carved flat by fog;
the bottomed-out clouds
refusing metaphor, no
language left to contain them.

*

This morning the light
is bleached by cold. Pinhole sun
caught up in clear quartz.
Blinded, I read the quiet
unwriting frost, field, fence, gull.

*

Church bells bend into
syllables, into patterns:
these leafless shadows
on the lawn clawing toward
asphalt, dispersing the day.

*

Now the room contains
the season, its signs inscribe
the wall, ink their way
across. When wind litters air
the lines vibrate─the room moves.

*

A silence beyond
mind, beyond thought. The way air
and light hum soundless-
ly over a field patched with
frost. The way vision listens.

*

Call it December─
skyline abbreviated
by a rogue cloud deck.
Dead leaves rattle through traffic.
Another world closes in.

*

Nothing to pronounce
but morning’s disorder. What
the dark sifts into
light: the room and its corners─
this illegible shadow.