“A 20 line, free-verse poem, unrhymed, in the style of John Ashbury's early poems in "Self-portrait In A Convex Mirror"”

In this room where slices of the afternoon gather  
Like rearranged newsprint—something unfinished,  
You pinch the air, gentle as a glassblower,  
Shape clarity into moments just slightly off-kilter.  
I watch you examine the milk-light slipping along the linoleum,  
An implied movement, the door ajar to some earlier hour.  
Shadows drift in increments, angles negotiating:  
There, the lamp’s shade is documented dusk  
While on the bookcase, faces swim in their jackets—  
A vague memory thrumming at the fingertips.

Between the kettle’s sigh and the pale flicker  
Of sudden laughter from the street below,  
I see the world’s fabled convexity:  
A translation made from color, borrowed from longing.  
The couch knows your gesture, how you fold intent into silence,  
And what returns is always partial,  
A linger of tea leaves, a postcard disregarded  
But significant in its cornered patience.  
Not the heroic stillness of marble,  
But the everyday undoneness of sitting together

Inside a spherical reflection—  
Intimate, unvarnished, astonishingly slow.

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