This morning, fog displaced the evening's trees.
Our uncut grass was palpably absent,
As though through a miracle of intent,
And overnight, instead of by degrees.
Brought to a halt, if not yet to our knees,
We saw, each minute, how every minute went
Into the void registering dissent.
The windchime drooped, abandoned by the breeze.

At ten precisely, a watery sun
Drew itself down, like gauze drawn through a crack.
By ten-fifteen, the pool stairs, one by one,
And then the pool, appeared. The fog hung slack
Above the grass it had, once, overrun.
At twenty-after-ten, the world was back.

                                 a. Then
"Slaked lime is what her breasts remind me of,
Or seethed milk gone quiet in a minute.
No gentled kid, she frets when forced to sit.
Her hair beats at the wind, thinning a groove
In space into which she moves as fluids move.
Now, being what she must be, she makes of it
A final form sweated to fit.
So a copper tube melts into a sleeve."

                                 b. Later
"Down from her neck and arms waves spilled earthward.
Her eyes hammered at the light, driving night
To the trussed mullions of that stony room
Wherein she hardened, needing no magic word
Even for what she held back, half in spite,
Even for what she guarded from the flame."