Chemistry

1. Glass

Inside my father's shed
I notched and snapped
a hollow cane of glass.
Softened in a yellow flame
transparency became opaque:
a glowing, drooping stalk,
syrup at its golden tip.

I bent and stretched and blew
without inhaling once,
wasting many pipes
until the molten toffee cooled
and hardened into crystal
shapes, and I had breathed
an apparatus, a still of glass.
...