The Evidence

Bruce Cohen

I am not as I know I should be

An accomplice to this winter evening.

Because the landscape’s snow-invisible

It seems I am too,

& come to realize this world’s a blanketed mutation of some other.

This balancing in the white-dark no one else

So beautifully visits. I converse with unfinished men convinced they

are right—

I speak to complete men who omnisciently doubt.

I reside in the kind of universe where nobody locks

His home. Over time, all keys go missing.

There are as many private definitions

Of love as there are snowflakes or fingerprints

Brushed as evidence after only

The vaguest notion a crime has been committed.