This is what
those small days feel like
after Thanksgiving
but before December—
the intensest pressure
is the necessity of waiting,
the secret force that exists
in the intervals,
lurking
in the cracks,
between
two realities inescapable.
Out in the street now,
every single structure braces—
inhales, quits its motion,
and prepares beautifully.
sensation of blankness,
of no-longer autumn but
not yet winter,
keeps seeping into everything—
saps all color and feeling,
leaves each pale vampiric body
on the landscape
strangely hyper-vivid,
clearly defined, sharpened,
tense and rigid
as if—frozen in ardent anticipation
of proximately
being—actually frozen.