all going dim

we see buildings with blank expressions
looking down on main street
we see the mountains in their panes
as reflections,
the windowpanes

and people go in and out all day from the icy city light
to the dimness, then back out into the icy light…

and the buildings are still
staring in their expressions and their bodies
are stiff and the mountains
are still sprawling as they always do with their angles
and cloud storms racing over the stillness
in the distance, turning and tumbling over
the icy blue sheets…

we see it all in the building panes
while the buildings stare blankly down
on main street

holding the peaks in their glasses
and the movements of the cloud storms
in their glasses, the spectacles
showing us what’s
behind our shoulders, the distances
and our movements as we walk
down icy sidewalks, the spectacles
again and again
using the stillness to move
flowing over the icy streets…


there is a lot of talk
over coffee and tea
and it washes over the interiors
of so many rooms

with voices tumbling over voices
jumbling together against walls
and rolling and tumbling over tables and
onto floors, through the cracks
and out through the open doors
with the heat into the cold
wind from the mountains…

it all goes, but then it doesn’t
because they are not the same walls
not the same floors or ceilings or bricks, the bricks
having something else added

as we said what we said
that one time, when we said it
and moved how we moved when
we moved to the doors,
opening and closing
the doors, to the outside
how we moved
and how we saw…

the faces of the buildings staring out
the faces of the people looking about
for what is out to see in, looking
for something unknown but looking
always going in to retire…

eventually to the buildings,
their interiors, sometimes looking out
through the windows against
the windowpanes, faces and hands
pressed against the glass, but then
going back in to sleep
the panes going black
in buildings within buildings
falling to sleep, going through doors
back to sleep
to other neighborhoods in sleep…

as the outside turns in and dims out
and the compartments grow dim
and the mountains are growing dim
no longer reflections in the glass,
no longer spectacles
the people growing dim

leaving main street,
the buildings staring
in their absence

then there’s nothing left to be said
and no one left to be seen

as the snow falls
blanketing the sidewalks
covering the streets while we sleep
and tumble in our dreams, in our white sheets
our dream spectacles