Robert Farnsworth

Winter Clock

 

Now that, he was

almost thinking, was

beautiful, wasn’t

it? Thrust across

the pearl-sheened

window some 

sketchy twigs and

one heavy, black

snow-doubled 

branch, and from

it a glossy crow’s 

oblique chandelle 

away:  baton arc, 

smoke script, fled 

pendulum, a second’s,

the hour’s famously 

ordinary signature,

fleeting route, at

the after-fling of

which he couldn’t

really call what he

felt wonder, since 

it seemed to have

departed the coast

of a rumored island

and have been sailing

most of a lifetime

     toward him.