Windshield

Sun today makes rocks like glass,
Shining in the cold December air
Like light refracted through the gash
Our windshield got last year
From a pebble hurled at it by some kid,
Or fellow car, or a fracture
In a cliff, a rock ejected by a skid
Of tectonic hemispheres
To turn our Datsun window glass
Into a quilt of souvenirs,
A reproduction of the cliff,
A mirror of the mica loaned
By gravity and the sharp unknown
To a car's ability to shift,
To turn around the potter's
Wheel of windshield glass
The spinning stone of tire,
Car, and gas that from reflected fire
Make an automobile entire,
That from a tiny blast
Of shale can manufacture
Prisms in the air like hail,
Parts of land and parts of air,
As we ourselves are parts of earth
And space, transparent as
The window's lucent glass,
Fragile as a face, or bent
And twisted like the windshield dent,
Our eyes protected from the tinted
Wind and naked light by angles
In a heated plate of malachite,
For what is glass but rock and heat,
And what is rock today but light
And glass reflected off the street's
Bright gray, the golf course grass,
The throughway's cold concrete,
Holograms through which
The sun must pass
On its way from glass
To us.