Tension

A string, stretched taut across a fret-
board: but not so tightly that it breaks its wings.

The air, suddenly reconstituted: now melting
block of butter, now impenetable barrier.

The glacier of a shoulder. The white upheaval
of your thousand and one solitudes, dry 

retching in the grass. Now I understand
how the eyes can cut, how a single word

changes the inflection of a line into a curve.
The finger, poised to skate against the lip

of a glass; the sound it releases 
just ahead of the feather-fine crack.