Juniper
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Five o’clock’s falling light, crushed from juniper
berries, held in little pockets of ice
the way windows harden against rain,

though the smell of rain keeps falling through
like a voice not heard, but remembered.
Such a slight tree, the juniper, twisted, sparse,

to have become a window, a view of ice
in all its meltings and freezings, rain, ice,
rain—the tongue’s window falling on bitter times.

Hard luck, when juniper’s light is the light you read by,
seeing in ice juniper’s thirst for rain,
while desire falls in at the darkened window,

the window you surely closed. A light
matter. But the smell of him falling into every corner:
an icy smell of juniper, laced with rain.