winter morning

All Your Secrets

What better time to tell me all your secrets

sitting by this window on the old dowagers

across the street, sure hand of dawn lifting

charcoal night to block in shapes of snow

covered roofs wreathed round by neural

bundles of trees piped with winter plaque,

ampules of porch light casting amber cones,

flare of first rays gilding eaves in gold leaf,

a shared delight to set the mood and loosen

your tongue, elevate the conversation beyond

soft intimations of endless settling, muffled

tick and creak from places deep within

you and me, distinctions blurred over time,

walls that could conceal brittle yellow

broadsheet reporting bi-partisan opposition

to the League of Nations and fears of a second  

outbreak of Spanish influenza, a foundation

balanced lightly on the head of a buffalo

nickel pressed into place by a superstitious

man who needed the money or a time capsule

rolled in oil skin tucked inside a copper box

packed in rock wool caged behind lathe,

curious secrets that sleep on while mine rouse

to internal revelries and emerge glistening

from fold and cleft to form up for the march

to the front, keeping cadence as one voice

faint but unmistakable, a sound you dismiss

as nothing more than wind, as friends will do.