Mercurial (Soap, Glass, Skull)

I

He's too old for soap bubbles,
but still the boy leans from the sill
into the dark, his lips' duct lofting
a porous ellipse about to break,
his face quiet as a room lit
by a single lamp; and from where I sit,
that light has scrubbed his temple
to a shard—so I hold my breath
and try to read the bubble's
book of blank, lifting to stay
for a moment, perhaps two,
in the air: the boy learning
to exhale, not sing,
his ceremony solemn
as Latin declensions, as paper
flowering in pools: the grindstone
and vertigo of art.


II

In the factory,
men twirl wands
until the blues
spool and mound:

threads
of hot glass dip
and craze into forms.

Tongs pull a leg,
then a leg
from a liquid

torso, soon
to harden as a horse.

And now a seer
takes to the woods, parting
a branch to make his dream:

four men row a boat
to the darkest
region of the sea.

One looks up
and sees a flock of crows
stilled above him.


III

If I ever said I loved you,
which I probably
won't, the words might sound
like a pipe
posed under glass,
or a map of some near galaxy:
planets shrubbed
in deepening green,
cress lit
by a starburst
of impulse—
this window box
an artist called
Dream World.


IV

There's a bubble housed
in the pediment above the skull;
it floats above the frazzle
in the bone.

Then a river of coins
you can never spend:
the balance
of cranium from gable.

The last transformation
is the one
you'll never see:

the lesson is inlaid with gold.