you don't want to ***** this newness with yourself
you lie
half-woken, a story
slipping in vomitous avalanche
of nowness, mourning
on a stack of crumpled sheets

night-stuck whiteness, imagining all
the games you might play
if you were to forget
your age: shaking
all that powder into the cracks
of your muscadet
dry skin
notes of apples,
saline

weather-woman, with her green screen showmanship
had not portended this outcome
this modern diviner you hold in high esteem

you always liked the way magicians seemed
to make something out of nothing
(a rabbit from a tophat gap, coins out of earlobes)
and winter is sort of like that, too
you wake up and everything is blanketed, you don't remember
the process, how it all got there
a snowshoe hare leaps
like she formed right on the snowbank
paper that came pre-sketched
free of gestation

beneath the avalanche muscadet turns to claret
but we can't see it happening
for miles and miles a blank page
what dies under the heel of perfection
a magician never reveals his secrets