This Soft Shadowed Being

for Andy

There is a grandeur and a gladness
to this liquid afternoon, this covert light,
this pearled translucent weather –
a strange aggrandizement of blessings
in the rain, its backdrop alabaster air –
near colorlessness – which obtains today
between Manhattan street trees’ dormant

branches: sky is quietly announcing something
large and private. December afternoon cannot
not praise the coming night: an envelope
of darkness has embraced the whole,
and we are never not in starlight –
and I hear the tap of drops outside
and I am in such golden warmth and stillness

in this room: a nearly cataleptic trance:
to move at all would be to injure an essential
stance: the pause between the steps of some
god’s dance: a hush, a glance, a savoring:
I know no way to translate this soft shadowed
being into language, but ever-pressing
nearly-winter sky demands I try.

.