I walked to the foot of a clock tower.  It was the end
of a ghost town, light filtering through dull windows,
birds turning their heads from their makeshift roosts.

A woman in a trench coat hurried to the top of the stairs,
hush, hush, her footsteps, the rain outside, a winter storm.
The blue made the birds seem breakable, the clock still—

everything else was darkness, not a click but a shudder,
which served as an explanation that even the perceptible
needs to be reminded of itself.  The woman might have said

come with me, but I couldn’t tell.  Not that I would have known
what to say. Sometimes my eyes are more
clever than a kaleidoscope, like a voice at the top of a stairwell

which says don’t you remember what could’ve been? as if it were
a tea cup still warm on the bedside table, as if memory could
collide back with me as a lone figure approaching from the outline

of a landscape.  What I’m saying is, it doesn’t matter
what happened next.  What happens happens now.

– Eric Stiefel