by Peter Leight

in a darkness of whiteness,
the transparent shell
curved like an eyeball or restrictive
lens, at once a protective
wall and an enclosing cell.
It is too damp for carpets.
Fires smolder in the grates.
Time is this wave
that breaks over us every day
as if it were a preservative
and not itself the invisible
container that packs us in like a sample
and takes us away.

Peter Leight lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. He has previously published poems in Paris Review, AGNI, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Matter, and other magazines.