Letter to a friend living on the moon

When I imagine you it is always
mid-step,
those boots only a rapper could love
poised over dusty regolith,
your whole self suspended,
waiting patiently to fall.

I hear you have a greenhouse there.
Do you grow tomatoes? Do they claw up
the way they do here, with fibrous stems
gripping frames with tiny runners,
their fruit heavy, bulbous, demanding?
I can only picture soft things growing--
seaweed, Spanish moss--
and bromeliads in the crevices of landing gear.

I should not take such liberties
with the thought of you as:
to see you in the morning, tying your hammock
to the wall,
yawning at the earth beyond a tiny porthole,
making faces at instant coffee.

And the truth is that I don't--
don't imagine you, I mean--
except in moments like this, when,
the water in a round bowl in the sink
reflecting the white of an overhead fluorescent,
it occurs to me that our orbit
has never been so well-defined.

winter, again

If you sped winter up
in the city,

it would make the joint-cracking sound
of a pomegranate

torn open for its seeds.
The reedy sunlight

lies down along the sidewalk,
resting in constellations of salt.

The undressed air, for a season,
carries only itself.

vacation

A 26-year-old stands by the door of a dark coffeeshop
half an hour after closing, one hand on the alarm pad,

calls back into the place to coworkers, to stop them moving.
They are collecting sweaters, bags; they are going home now.

After momentary stillness the alarm beeps, they go outside.
It is warm or it is cold.

70 years later, looking at the trees beyond the window
the 26-year-old thinks, "yes--that.
that exactly."