A Bottle of Milk

This is the room in which you first noticed
cool sweat on a bottle of milk.
Coating it evenly from cap to table
except where some long crystalline letters
rise like low ridges above the fog.

You could run a few fingers over them
but you prefer to go live in their light.
A light they shed before they say anything.
A light that must also do for water
on the small globe of this moment.

I f you turn the bottle just so
you can see through them side to side,
and the old print on the wall open
into a field of rose light
where you can walk mile after mile
and not a single soul the wiser.

But now the outside of the letters returns
and your new mother pours you a glass
Then she buttons you and takes you out
down the two flights to the backyard

where the new light has already landed,
holding the day with such great ease,
even down to the gray stair you stand on
and the white railing under your hand.

Robert Carnevale

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