If you don’t know a word, go around it
circumnavigating its edges until it becomes
an abstraction; or excavating its morphemes
until the ground, opened, raw, is the common
soil of translation. Like an icicle
you engulf, let it drip down your throat;
like a moment that means much more,
let it dribble while your teeth recoil.
This is fog, sound, wind, rain.
Stick your tongue out to say it,
savour the frozen contours as they melt.
It is the distillation of an instant,
this tender light; it is the word that escapes you.