dextrous though it is, time fumbles, searching
for silk. It's a woven lattice, can not hold
the white dwarf weight, or the spirit:
a tempestuous broth of crunched leaves,
and, if we lift our eyes: a prelude.

and now my consciousness electric, too,
is a hissing snake in the still brush,
myopia, waist deep in a red lake
of rusted clocks, whose mechanical parts
today count down the stillness they eschew.

and now, lights made of fractal laughter,
in ochre, red, and amber hue, issue sounds
torn from my caterwauling coming into being,
of how i am sundered, and must abjure
as December rain falls.

and here, reddened by rust,
oxygen, and hydrogen combine
to form a ministry of clouds
to remind that time must stop,
and that it already has.

---

"December Rains" is one of five poems by Oisín Breen in the print edition of Clam No. 11.