Above the Lake
       

In this season the world is composed
of absence: black, which is the color
of no-light, and white, which is the color
of blank. By world I mean this snow,
these woods, this bleak sky, this mute
roar, which is the afterlife of sound.
By absence I mean abstraction, this black
brook as diagonal gash, these slim
trees as lines, vertical, monotonous,
impossibly interchangeable. By abstraction
I mean meaning, I mean human longing,
I mean loneliness accreting as quiet
on quiet, as white on bluish white.

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Copyright © 2012 Stephen O'Connor All rights reserved
from Beloit Poetry Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission