The Physicist and the Truffle Hunter

Carlo, let me know
(The physicist, not the truffle hunter)

Time’s only proof
Is the piss stain of heat loss

The leathery steam snapping curls
Over the lip of your coffee cup

Through a November dawn
Chittering with birds—

Their heat will only rise
When the new sky volleys enough

Of the shameless branches
With arrows of light, but

Carlo, the truffle hunter,
Takes his hounds with their trained snouts

Much, much earlier than birds
When the earliest day is still night

Avoiding his wife’s castigation
With her elbows turned out the window

Screaming his name
Down the valley slopes

Where the lime in the soil
Was not dug for Roman concrete

But fed in secret the costly, earthen,
Fungal diamonds sniffed out;

Folding over the centuries
Like Italian playing cards

With clever daggers that shine
Between two elderly patriarchs

Who do not and never shall
Eat much of what they discover—

As they are eaten by time
The Carlos smoke over coffee

Phasing in and out 
Of the e(i)ther