The 1002nd Night

Action R I S I N G oots tied to wormed hollows a spade cuts clean. On its sharp tongue dirt's rich cake steams as if turned from its pan to cool, crumbling at the edges— but icing can slather over such ravage with roses. Gowned and veiled with flour, a baker sweats over petals built into bloom, his forehead beaded, his shop window, too. Not standing on ceremony, he roots a marzipan couple in the virginal snow of the cake's top tier— so they list a little, sugar creme frosting their shoes, still they look nowhere, not even to each other, but ahead, needing no rehearsal to face priest, judge, ship's captain, or camera. Beyond the window's heaped altars, black­frozen leaves crunch under the scrubbed sensible shoes of a nurse skirting the barrows, the burrows of roadwork, the crew's grimy glance whistling suggestions at her clean whites. In a raveling sweater, light­colored once when someone knit it for him, a man lowers into a ditch until he's just shovel's edge and dirt flung to the crest of a mound, its rising sliding into denouement. FALLING The kiss of one ball knocking another down billiards' ripe field, that's how calculated should be the join of the tight­compassed circles he skates—but a figure eight stumbles, lopsided infinity fallen from grace. Up from the cold cushion smacked in the middle of daydream, he pushes off, stroking half an eight: three's two cups for the threesome that's blade, ice, and onshore coach cradling laced coffee in a Thermos cup. Its steam cuts a small window's trace in the wall of stony cold the skater skirts. He could be on its other side, running a moistened finger round the rim of a glass till wine and crystal screamed their joint rounded note as if outlining a breast—but he sights three feet ahead at another melting, old friction scrawled on penmanship's desk. Up from the sheaf of shore, a red cup's swash initials a fresh page as it waves him on, champion at the going and going over of rings and zeros, the white ink of his coach's voice spilling, demanding just that he stay on the tracings—O to stay on. ...