Adventurous light plays on vegetable surfaces,
out to remind us, it seems, that this is the morning after.
We’ve been talking as if bare, crude facts
were nothing more than annoyances.
Across the way, cleaned washing balloons
in chance wind currents and lime-green leaves
make love a plausible topic of conversation.
In the distance, a city does what it has to do
and email messages stack up to not much at all.
You are paring and peeling hot peppers
while the job I was meant to do goes undone.
The kettle’s drilling boiling sounds out
the proximities of silence. That was my promise,
I think, to reach a certain temperature, to make the tea.
