There trips the clock's second hand, which every moment tumbles deeper into everywhere like a cough into a lung. There goes a noun, unpronounced, into obscurity. He was born in Slovakia, where he lived until the age of five. A salvo of cracks every five minutes. I recall the barking Soviet carbines in Prague, August '68 only this time, the casualties don't bleed.
Incorruptible poplars bow their foreheads lamenting the frigid bite of frost.
The lightest breeze plays a requiem on glass xylophones, as I stride through the zircon land, a hooded knight in a white parka. Waterfalls of light cascade off the cedars. Heaven spilled into the lake and froze. The adolescent sun conceives a million babies skating on inch long crystals. The red bud longs for the yellow bud in the prophylactic ice.