December Evenings

Blanket sky, white frost,

breath clouds hanging past chapped lips,

fir tree wrapped in light.

Weimar mit Freundinnen

Bright day, liquid sunlight spilling from a tipped pot,

staining the ground light and dark marble. We sit outside 

the Bauhaus school and watch a group of students raise 

an unspooled film of plastic, how the breeze fills it, 

how it billows and curls organic, sea creature in the air; 

in the park we make a game of naming trees, birds, flowers, 

then waft between the rippling walls of a cloth house: 

learn it's an artist's response - feminist, environmentalist; 

postcard streets drip with locals, tourists, we trickle through, 

find water, find stamps, read aloud the googled answers 

to our many questions, leave laughter in fallen leaves behind 

us. Later, over a bowl of steaming spices, I free a fervid cry - 

howl I carry in my chest, fear for a limp future--

But in the present here are friends haloed in evening sun

and boarding the return to Leipzig we're ebullient again, 

trading chocolates, thoughts & anecdotes, opinions on living, 

society, health - twittering children in a private sphere 

while evening falls and Germany rushes past ever darker;

looking out the window in a breath of quiet I see again 

that sheet of plastic film outside the Bauhaus school 

how it reared and surged, how it breathed as it heaved,

organic. 

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Beethovenstraße 15 Bibliothek, Donnerstag nachmittag

 

When tapped, laptop keys sound like small glass beads clinking together;

when dropped on wooden desks pens and pencils sound largely the same

only the quality of wood on wood is denser, the plastic on wood more transparent;

when opened, bottles of fizzy liquid hiss, unimpressed at the impertinence;

when placed on wooden desks elbows can make either no noise, or a small

whuffing thump depending on the force used to put them there;

when opened in not-silence a chocolate bars' wrapper will shout unabashedly;

when swung outwards doors will emit a hallways' muffled chatter

like a small child desperate to lighten the mood;

when pushed backwards instead of lifted chairs will moan;

when drawn open or closed zips will whine or drone

depending on the speed with which they are pulled;

when dropped on the floor a book will give a hearty flap of complaint;

when floating in the cavern of a library, whispers in a foreign language

sound much like the unintelligible secrets of the universe;

when surrounded by studious young people there's a tendency

to wonder if you have ever taken anything seriously at all. 

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On a Leipzig Tram in the afternoon

I thought I found a spider's web

glistening silk and diamond in a corner of an open window

but when I looked again it was gone

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