In the blue hour before dawn
I stand at my bedroom window
close enough to kiss the glass
and breathe back at clouds
of frost the color of moonlit
granite: a luminous whale,
two pillows, a ghost
hill that a tilt of my head
can place between mountains
in the pale distance.

It’s as though the black bear
I surprised on a trail yesterday,
that reared-up thing muscled
like a man who stared at me,
astounded, before crashing off,
came chuffing down last night
to learn what it had run from,
and so stood at my window,
breathing patiently over my
sleep, pawing now and then
at the elusive dreamwater
of a man who had laughed
when it fled from the trail,
but then turned in bed
for hours, the glass pane
growing so thin.