This second is an infinitive—

to go, to come, to fall, to hope,

to be—a gift

of a frozen pendulum, of

boundlessness, of yet unknown

casualties. One is

shipwrecked

between potential and being,

the essential and the accidental,

a thousand things

that need names but lack them.

This anonymous second

is a burdened gift. Within

this compressed sky, are concealed

realities. This star itself, the site

of innumerable forces; this light,

the locus of an absolute effect

mirrored in this breeze, this silence,

this pale disbelief.