The dry leaf crumbling in the toddler’s fist,
The cloud-form wind-rent at the careless naming,
The fluttering dream that flees the day’s periphery,
The memory-scent long rotted from its root:
The lover hard pursued will not be kissed
Nor love be raveled out from life’s polyphony;
The truth, that beaten dog, is loath to trust us
’Til it lay its head unbidden at our foot.
And still with art the cunning mind constructs
Its algorithms and its aqueducts
To calculate the right, to channel justice,
Enumerate the light and catch the raining…
Once holding, we behold what’s left us then:
Water wisps that cling to porcelain.