Poetry: Zachary Bos

TO A PHILOSOPHER

On my way to meet you for a celebratory drink
on your birthday, when the train stops to pick up
more passengers, handfuls of fiber-glass fine snow

blow in through the open doors. The wind is coming
toward us, perpendicular to the tracks, so when I look
into the oncoming powder it seems as if the world

is advancing at me: the tiny icy monads attracted
by my attention, winter flies drawn to the train light,
the plenum swerving along Lucretian lines toward
the unknowable end their prime mover has in mind.

Every book to you is a lattice nailed lightly over
the mouth of a bottomless well. You look always
through the grid into the dark, promising depths,

through the double grin of each pair of lunulae
into the lacunae their smiles attempt to conceal.
Is this how philosophers see? Points of illumination.

You feel the constant torque between the visible
and the known, the true and written and spoken,
every page full of blank space where asterisks
glower like the lit animal eyes of constellations.