A Cracked Storefront Window

The natural prayer of the soul: attentiveness.

Malebranche

I pass it for days,

this glass aware of its doom,

branched silver,

it is chance made beautiful,

a moment of contact, held

in the camera of the pane,

its frozen shatter

most plaintive and awake at night

when it pulses

with the luminous blood

of passing headlights:

Presence. Absence.

In the day

it's a ghost of itself,

a screen to veil

the wares sold there:

earth-colored pots, bowls,

candles fat with fuel

and little statues,

Buddha, silent

with his closed-eye smile

behind this curtain of accident.