If I could address your accusation that I lie.
If it is possible
to touch the hour, the burr, that whole up-
ended half-decade we spent wondering about each other—
you slumped on your kitchen floor arms crossed arguments
stockpiled. Will we thieve or be brave?
Today, mid-February where the wind is full of snow
that will not fall, brown leaves
curled against the blanched grass,
I suspect there are no gardens in you.
You suspect I am brimming with vast shadows,
the way the mud and sky are brimming with snow.
Winds chafe the maples and somewhere
an animal huddles under woodland trash.
Will it be now, or later?
Will it be now?
Will it be now, or later?
Will it be now?
Will the moon burn over the tree-line
Will the arteries clutch
Will the brain in its shock-worn pockets smooth itself down
Being small, as we are, and negligible
Scarcely entitled to a name, such as beloved
Not known to exist except as beloved
As you were, uncertain now what you are
Will the brick houses withstand the rest of winter
Will the wood houses
Will the men be warm enough at night
The women
Will each find his way to another, and be housed, and be free from harm
Will the man who sleeps under the plastic tarp under the bridge be free from harm
The families in the trailers
Will the bills ever ease
Will the tensions ease, slacken, and come to seem unimportant
Will you ever come to seem unimportant
Uncertain now who you are—
And when will this trance end?
Shapes night-wheeling in the breeze
Spurs of bone a patch of trees
Wind-washed and moon-fretted
A night composed of nothing
A herd of deer browsing on lichen
Train-horn pulling through the dark
Wing-splash
Killed in the wind farms
Tangled in the cell phone towers
The birds
The birds
The seed-heads loosening
The seed-heads loosening in bright-and-dull dawn.
-Joanna Klink
