Brendan Todt

In the Hotel Bathroom

A glass is dropped and the exploded
pieces hang in the air together.
Then they fall, as all things must.
I too fell, as a glass
from the counter, in love.
There were times when I was weightless.
Others I was on the ground and she--
bounding through the air.
Though we appear transparent,
we bend our truths like light
and do not wash ourselves enough.
We seek metaphor—I love you
like an apple falling in a vacuum--
but are incomparable--
O bright vowel;
O brooding consonant--
and therefore fit like guardsmen
changing shifts.
Night snuck in without
a knock and the day refused the maid.
The bill arrived at dawn
but neither looked.

---

The Origins

What continues cools.
Why else
runs the river
so cold and the children
so hesitant to dip
their feet into it?
How can they
continue what’s only
in their organs
just begun?
The mountains--
The mountains above and around.
How cold the mountains.
How continuous:
Rocks covered in life;
rocks themselves lacking it.

---

From an Automobile

I spun the tires.
The snow fell well.
Under me the earth moved
and I stayed where I was.
You were there, who watched,
and weighed.  The wait was long.
The sun, meanwhile, was.
The comparisons are minimal--
except for everything
that was never seen.
What moves through me moves me.
Your skin stops on mine—in time.
Tired and friction, we burn.
Winter ceases, eases
as out of snow.
Tomorrow, the winds will be--
our tracks as though we never were.