Element It Has

Glyn Maxwell (2007)

It may not be the same, what we appear
to thrive or slow or fade in, though across
its white expanses steadily we stare;

the only common element it has
is loss, and it may differ in the terms
it gives it. And it thickens with the days,

thins in the night as if it more than seems
a carbon thing, afflicted, prone to what?
To us, as if obscurely hopes or harms

can come to it, as if it walks the street
in love, abashed, abused, as if it, too
expands to wonder at the point of it,

contracts to desperation in the blue
morning, helplessly expands anew.