Carlo, let me know

(The physicist, not the truffle hunter)

 

Time’s only proof

Is the piss stain of heat loss

 

The leathery steam snapping curls

Over the lip of your coffee cup

 

Through a November dawn

Chittering with birds—

 

Their heat will only rise

When the new sky volleys enough

 

Of the shameless branches

With arrows of light, but

 

Carlo, the truffle hunter,

Takes his hounds with their trained snouts

 

Much, much earlier than birds

When the earliest day is still night

 

Avoiding his wife’s castigation

With her elbows turned out the window

 

Screaming his name

Down the valley slopes

 

Where the lime in the soil

Was not dug for Roman concrete

 

But fed in secret the costly, earthen,

Fungal diamonds sniffed out;

 

Folding over the centuries

Like Italian playing cards

 

With clever daggers that shine

Between two elderly patriarchs

 

Who do not and never shall

Eat much of what they discover—

 

As they are eaten by time

The Carlos smoke over coffee

 

Phasing in and out 

Of the e(i)ther