A robin strings a dirge together from a basswood,
one low note sustained and lonesome.
All I can do is watch the snow fall through itself.
Cars peruse the horizon, stale headlights
striking down limestone. They wink like things with secrets.
What if it’s endless, this grief, accruing like interest?
The piper wants nothing but paid.
So he takes our children.
What is poetry but saying old things
in new ways? What is art
but a broken off piece of the world?
Painted Mason jars on the kitchen table
and a half-eaten cake. Must be winter.
Must be the end of something. Must be eternity.
The sky curses the hills, a cold hand
falling atop crests. Absolution?
Long antennas in the distance that never
lose their light. An unread book is a blackhole.
For every action there is an equal and opposite
wrinkle in God’s face. The tectonic soul hard at work.
Crags turn to oceans. I go for a walk.
A storm set the garbage cans loose in the night.
Thus this is the wrong everyone tries righting for a while.
On a soggy box mouldering in the gutter,
the word “Windcatcher” in three languages.
Off in the distance, I see this device in someone’s yard—
part pinwheel, part yard decoration, 100% money-grab.
Like everything else in whatever this world is becoming,
it does its damnedest to serve a purpose.