Vapors

Summer hangs on until midwinter, when
reproach echoes a reminder that no softness
can exist without some sort of trickery.
Bruised and slightly faster than average,
the heart stands out in the last downpour
and won't be mentioned again until it stops.
Anguish and poisonous phantoms explode
in art, to restore it with their vapors,
their lights that correct color from above.
If the soul is a souvenir in human shape,
the sun is half its shadow and discloses
who is what when in public, but when alone
there are other, brighter stars, all like
contemporary prisons in every way
but the one that is memory. Fangs grow
from those stars. Day after day, the sea spits
up at the sky, always from new mouths,
and sometimes a cloud obscures the moon
just as two people step out onto a balcony.