No Cure

the long sleep awaits, sleep of nailed shut windows
silent sleep of the wordless cold. we have become so apart from
the old suffering, the bundled unease, the daily staggering
into the teeth of storms to find skinny food, the snow that drops
quiet as a smothering owl upon our backs, so far from it
that when spring buds, dearly as it does, we no longer
reach up to touch its emerald face, we no longer stain our
knees on the grass of kneeling. instead, we lug around 
our old crosses in a New England way whining about 
the rain and slush. that we are not dead never occurs to
us and so maybe we are not but even so we are dying
so slowly from something that no longer has a cure.
​