​snow lays its long white
sheet over the earth.
silence explains its
math of zeroes;
the memory I had of
you singing is finally
lost. I have never heard
my heart so clearly,
felt the cold so keenly.
who knows which
will break me first.

​in this November
dark, anything could
be happening outside
a murder, a council
of bears, ghosts skating
on their bones over
the pond. now and then
the moon tips her silver
crown or goes dark, her
cipher tongue
inking the influence
that we feel but do
not see. shut-windowed
and warm, there is
nothing to fear here but
old age and shame, both things
we should have outgrown.
I do not know what
I will face tomorrow--
our world is backward
to nature; the night
has grown quiet and unselfish;
the day has become devastating
as paper. what will
take us will come
unexpectedly as an
attorney invading lunch.
please forgive
me for siding with
the dark and for running
my fingers down the
thigh of sleep; there is too
much I prefer not to wake
up to.

I.
I am thinking of sorrow
the big kind,
the crawling on all fours
through the dirt,
the house of hammers.
maybe there is such
thing as light
maybe it is spring
somewhere else
on the other side
of the earth, or on
a different earth.
the cup is so familiar
the distance, a blurred
Polaroid. if I were
a bear they'd shoot me.
the sky is a severe
hand, there is no
sea to shipwreck
honorably in.
maybe you know
this, or maybe it's just
a whisper, a thing
you turn up the music
against. the thing
about liferafts is
they're built for one;
the thing about desert
islands is you share
them with sand.

II.
I try to conjure
my grandfather and
grandmother in vain.
the Ouija board tells
me no one is home
in the switchhouse
of the dead.

III.
in my car
the houses I pass
look like unreal
advertisements.
I will orbit all
night, arriving
on the doorstop
I set out from.

IV.
optimists
don't kill themselves.
we burn right here,
under the eyes
of a living god,
reincarnated as goats
or worse without
having to die first.

V.
if, as Gibran said, Hell
is governed by those
who do not yield to
fire, then am I
a tourist?

VI.
​tonight the crickets
will make a bed for me
from the black cloth
of night, and a deer will
circle me three times.
if there is a moon
it will look the other way.
the least of my prayers--
for sleep, for sunrise--
will be enough;
In the morning
I will repeat them
to make them stick.

​I am thinking of
blindness lately
in all its forms--
the deprivation
of color (more dear to
me than time or pain)
and of how the
helplessly dead lie
blind staring off
into limitless soil.
there is a lot
to be said for the
eyes, the alpha
sense: let there be
light, the wires that
run from them to
the heart, a sunset
the face of one loved
or the familiar rectangle
of home after wandering
abused and lost
(a tale of how we
suffered other forms
of blindness too)--
but let me be clear:
it would kill me to
lose the light, I would
rather set myself
on fire. I am fine
with loss of clarity
suspecting I never
had any, and what
I took for it were
knives, precipices--
prepared to let go that
attachment the way
Monet did, late in
life, color, form
smudged edgeless
as scents, the way
things truly exist
before we pull
them apart, before
we imagine we
are apart.

​the crickets fiddle out
their last
let the dead prepare
for more dead
let the marrow feed
the mice
every frost- blanched
leaf falls atop
another leaf
death stacked atop
death even as stones
are worn down
down to sand
to sea level.
if you have lost
a love, you will
feel this, if you have
buried hearts
you will not be able
to brush it off.
don't say it doesn't
matter, that blood
isn't red, that you
haven't wandered
foolish, kissing
factories, throwing
stones at tombstones
spilling your little
cup of time.

​I have no disdain
for anyone really
except maybe for
a few politicians
whom I don't know
personally and if
I did might find them
not unlike myself
were I also excruciated
with power
nor do I have disdain
for animals or the sun
or sharp stones.
bad food maybe, but
not for those who
toil to cook it
even the smokestacks
which are ugly
but make me think
of minarets or the tower
that was built to reach
God, so that God could
be kissed and made real--
a god they claimed
frowned upon us.
No, I have little heart
for disdain, but in
that littleness, there
I sit, a little self of me
wringing its sad hands
and cursing the
heart as a prison
and the blood as venom--
my blood. my heart.

​I used to want the
world to take the
silence from my
mouth like a holy
wafer. now I only
offer it to the sea
and wind. a bed of
waves, I say. a thigh
of northerly across
my pink flesh.
there are not words
enough for the
unfairness of the
world. our tongues
keep stacking
the stones.
let the night lay
her eyelids on
my lips. let the
counting of stars
begin. I want to die
with a heart no
heavier than a
whisper.