The 1002nd Night

Foolscap Mote upon mote's endearments flung after long­lost loves, gauntlets spoiling too late for fights, petals and capes untrod by untried brides: centuries of dust patch a tapestry where moth­eaten knots have let go, no longer holding their court of love to account but counting out clouds swollen with coming weather. One lopsidedly shapes the cap dropped by a fool who mimed marriage—dowry's highly polished fork taken by knife's sharp swipe. His bells are fading; royal colors gray; snows have settled on a solid river at one with skaters sluggish on sheep bones, stroking upwind toward home and icebergs of bread sopped in crystalline milk. Frost's brocaded the window a troubadour's half­frozen beneath, lute untuning under snow­shot cloak, curses to flower from his suspended breath. In a stand of geese a scribe, unmoving, waits a snowy quill's loosening, lambskin already scraped and cured. Middle hours' devotions limned, an illuminator stares into middle distance, unseeing, through sunless noon, a spilled­milk sky his palette can render only blue so deep­dyed I look away—into afterimage, winter's overripe sun sinking into blank page, dragging the day with the wary wisdom of fool who counts on nothing not cruelly kind. Love's the undone. No, love the remains. ...