Change of Phase

  • Snow defines the shaft
  • of street lamp light
  • like motes
  •                    of dust
  •                                 in the barn
  • where sunlight fills the dark
  • husk of barn between planks
  • of the wall.
  •                    Scraps of straw float
  • from the loft, held in the light
  • like ancient insects in amber,
  • remains of leaves
  •                    in slowly melting ice.

The New Press Literary Quarterly
Summer 1994