Small Talk Café, Holland
There is a stillness here only
certain wines can achieve.
Yellow tongues of fields brood
under a skyload of clouds, and the sun's
soft dialect rests on my shoulders.
I fall into my own noisy head. My hand's
a small pear whose core
is a still-life that breathes backwards
like a mirror. Everything's
plausible. I work to bring
into my body the breeze, that
instrument which doesn't grieve
when it lets go of its last note.
published in Antioch Review, 1994
