Kasper Salonen

 

(cold) spell


the gnat snaps
like a glass pot of honey stung open in frost
& caught dead

by the sun — apologetic killer,

sad moon-thief
possessed by an undersea wind,

shocked at its blood in the evening
    (gold dust
        swirling
        where summer
        shoulders its
            alembic—)



the south wind finds another


spring evening—clouds are a thin
vapour of some great burning,

the amassed escapees of a river
on fire, and a ricepaper disc thinner
than the days before a death in
winter gleams like a coin, a monocle

through which a planet looks—
a new freeze settles in, warming
a new world back
to the spontaneous wisdom of insects,

the whoops of busy dogs, the sea
birds making a show of it inland,
the asphalt. snow creeps back
to its stony core, leaving

archipelagos in the grass and us
to wonder which on a map
would be land, which the ocean's
cool, thunderous lap
on the seabed's sand.




 


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