All Your Secrets

What better time to tell me all your secrets
sitting by this window on the old dowagers
across the street, sure hand of dawn lifting
charcoal night to block in shapes of snow
covered roofs wreathed round by neural
bundles of trees piped with winter plaque,
ampules of porch light casting amber cones,

flare of first rays gilding eaves in gold leaf,
a shared delight to set the mood and loosen
your tongue, elevate the conversation beyond
soft intimations of endless settling, muffled
tick and creak from places deep within
you and me, distinctions blurred over time,
walls that could conceal brittle yellow

broadsheet reporting bi-partisan opposition
to the League of Nations and fears of a second  
outbreak of Spanish influenza, a foundation
balanced lightly on the head of a buffalo
nickel pressed into place by a superstitious
man who needed the money or a time capsule
rolled in oil skin tucked inside a copper box

packed in rock wool caged behind lathe,
curious secrets that sleep on while mine rouse
to internal revelries and emerge glistening
from fold and cleft to form up for the march
to the front, keeping cadence as one voice
faint but unmistakable, a sound you dismiss
as nothing more than wind, as friends will do.