OBSERVANTS

Light snags frost as it edges into winter,

dragging glint and spark along pavements embossed

with ice.  Glossed among crystals, the dawn splinters

into tint and gleam where Hondas trail exhaust.

Ground fog capers.  Eddies curl behind a truck,

reconstructing furls of light as if wraiths shaped

alive, vapors in turbulence, chaos rucked

into structure and beams piercing a ground-scape.

Sedans coast past.  An Audi shifts gears and lisps,

parsing whispered light like sentences of ghosts

who drift, mostly frayed to nothing in the crisp

morning, wisped near absence, a glimmering host

pacing pavements while the new sun unfreezes.

The world eases through their forms, each remnant face

bleared, erased slowly as the bright increases

and light releases ice, leaving little trace.

Peter Munro counts fish, conducting research fishing cruises in the Bering Sea, the Gulf of Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands. His poems have been published in Poetry, Beloit Poetry Journal, Iowa Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Carolina Quarterly, and elsewhere.