Wonderment

[for Mithsandi]

What magic wand do you wave
when with color and line and whiteness
tremendous distances you collapse
to cast in stone your heart?

Among the thousand and one
how is time for caress found
and how with infrequent and brief touch
are spells cast on cat, on dog, on me?

Is it star dust gathered and sifted
that glance and nonchalance decorate
as you flit from planet to planet
in snap-fingered nimbleness?

And how without flourish
or even painstaking dissolution
do you from vocabularies silence distill
and nevertheless so much say?