Beyond Windows
Sandra Fees
A yellow rectangle
thrust against midnight
and inside an elderly woman
rocking a child
cutting a tooth
that’ll be white
as morning-sky hunger
but for now
the woman’s face is impassable
and the child’s streaked.
It’s a long way to daylight
the tick-tock of my unillumined house
reveals nothing in exchange
no hint of the lone rhythm
of scuffled sleep.
No one really knows
what happens behind windows
how in the lavish and sleepless
hours of lamplight
and in the rounding
of the ciphered moon
there’s a tender budding
toward dawn.