Night of the freezing rain

November 13, 1986

(after sorting through revisions from years of writing) What is it that I have said? I've unraveled words like knitting I could never get right, pulling out and re-forming, again and again. Looking back over words, I want to see a blue bowl on a white table, a ceramic pitcher of water with glazed yellow iris blooming on the sides. A table that looks like a blessing. Under the streetlamp, the peach tree is amber glass and holds a million droplet lights. I can't believe its beauty, the street blacker under the sheen, the stillness lifted from some windless, glacial place. Having come out to these boughs and walkways glazed in ice, I stand looking up at the frozen lights. How is it I expect at any moment warm drops on my bare hands?