A February Evening

At this hour a room above the world
stands still, silent, and full of evening’s glow.
Beyond billowing drapes brushed by a breeze
banks of silvery clouds scatter shafts
into amber stilts on which daylight strides
from patch of land to patch of land
on measureless legs of the sun.

From its great distance finally ending with us,
its warm liquid paints the panes, enunciates
the tones of the floorboards and the flower’s effusions,
couples with abandoned memories in the corners,
drapes itself from the ceiling like yesterday’s
voices, like laughter from an hour ago.
A makeshift vase supports the stems

of adoration’s condensation in matter; colorful,
the ebb of hours retreats. On the oven
steam fights the lids of pots, desiring
that eternal suffusion of essences into each other,
imitating our intimacy’s expansion into space
surrounding us. Night soon comes on
as soft as milk in a glass carafe.