—In life's aloneness we die, in life's

                                                                    window we live

Paintdrops on easelfield, blued trees

                                   and thunderclouds,

Then the dead zones of stems and twigs,

A sprawl of weeds

                             in a windy blue current.

There are the small silver clockmakers

In the sky when the night closet

                                                      swings open,

Star-millions glistening like a shirt of rain, plotting

                               their tracks and silvery sounds,

Full circles of stars wheeling down through the air,

Like dreams of zeroes made visible

                                             in the night sky,

The world edging itself onto a flat stage,

                         stained and brushed to stillness.

Rain hazes all up beyond the panes,

Sheet against sheet, shadow against hand.

Night crosses the blue sky, plateau

                                             or ending point,

The moon scales its blue yard, silvery and blurry,

Changing colors in the late steel of afternoon

                                       as I cross back into day

And give way to the leaves, wet with rain

and liquid strokes.

Juan Carlos Vargas (Costa Rica)  has had work appear in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Chicago Review, Rainbow Curve, Verse Daily, and elsewhere.