Fine

You speak in code that no heart breaks.
How are you this sunny, windy day?

Fine

I know the day is fine, but you:
I cannot tell, you know.
Your Fine is impenetrable.

I can suspect that on your island
you feel wind cutting into tearducts.

What is this Fine, this wall of code
no intuition breaks?

I know I could suspect the worst:
torture it out of you
with more pain than you inflict on yourself.

Would your confession
extracted on the rack in this fine dungeon
you have sentenced yourself to
tell more than your iron mask hides?

I want to shake you out of your smeltered Fine:
give you some way to spring off that
waterboard that is your daily routine,
see you breathe two successive breaths
of sunny, windy oxygen.

But you are Fine you say.

There is flint in the essential silence
that puddles around your Fine—
some day that oil will ignite:
Fine will be Fire
but I will be on a different island.