calm

Light caresses the sharp corners
at the edge of my thought
curling logs and snow and blue sky into
poetry that I
can't quite unlimber from an
awkward place at the barre.
It's not really there, see. It's
in the looking glass to my left
or out the window skating down the
sharp slide of the 4:30 sunset
on the ice-rutted street
with the school just entering its sleep
like a laptop softly folded
whirring down
while I, puzzled, try to remember the
crossword I was solving
in my head
or was it here, on the papers in my lap?
where no colours tilt
and slice, no prisms bending
the day into a shard of happiness
no click of wonder in my
hippocampus, that university of horses,
that storage of joy, that
cul-de-sac leading nowhere useful
but deliciously expansive
and sweet as memory
sand and sunscreen and Oreo crumbs
and cotton candy
and a sailboat stranded on a blue lake
with a boy...