Consider This:

 

Consider this:

 

when reading a love poem

even if it were

written for you it isn’t

written just

for you

just like rain isn’t itself

simply

one drop of water

or snow itself

no matter how unique

each crystal’d speck

isn’t one single flake.      It’s what falls

before and after it

it’s what is

the accumulation

of it

it is the container

and the keep or strain of it

how much it can

bear before it breaks

or reaches the lip

and ripples there against it

before it simply falls

though that may never be

seen and then it pours over

over and over

and over

until it is

no more

or if it were snow

it heaps and heaps on the door-

step and that first view out

across it after the storm

is virgin

is called being clean

(we even briefly,

conveniently,

forget what’s beneath)

being free from touch

though to reach you

and to touch you from where you are

seeing it all means to

mark the surface

unremarkably, the weight

of the white hiked up to the knee

and the drag of the toe

atop the clean

surface of things leading

both to and away from

the door standing open

(right? it’s standing open

and the jamb is frozen

and too the still unknown unshown

surface of the full (frozen also) rain

 

barrel covered in snow

 

as yet unbrushed

as yet heaping

as yet its winking crystals

are still

waiting and waiting for the arriving

light