Book excerpt: From Before Recollection: TRANSCENDENTAL POSTCARD Ann Lauterbach The outlook such that time is told on waking, Without aid of cock or clock's crow. In fact all the birds are elsewhere, Poised on glossy page or in some fall Migration. Sun up over mountain is precision, Then mist travels, exhaling day. All else, all change, is air, Dew relenting on the blades And mirror rhymes Where water bears resemblance: A strut of hues to pale even Revlon's alchemy and, In the center of its glaze, a cauldron of sky-cast blue.