Moving Toward Winter
this is the cold we need
this frozen chunk of dark
we suck on with delight
we felt as kids with our mom's
pop-flavored ice-cubes
this with stars so sharp
they pierce the night black
pupils of our eyes
with an almost-pain
that with masochistic pleasure
we demand again and again
some grown so large
in this clear air
that even to our naked eyes
they reveal themselves
unlike their city pose
as pinpoints but with form
misshapen circled by moons or
planes of light we want
to name them claim them
yet let them stay wild
like the whippoorwill we named
Old Red-Eye because light beams
do that to him at night
every night he sings on
the broken branch of the oak
near the old hewn-log house
and later out by the graves
of the children they say
he has sung here
for a hundred years of summer
dusks and pre-dawn hours
but fall sends him off somewhere
or in somewhere who knows
and last time we were here
his voice had grown sad
it could be a she weak
and croaky as if with a cold
and tonight there is no singing
winter being imminent
perhaps already here still
what sphere sounds there are
on these black crystal nights
will suffice until that bird
returns as we know it will
drawing closer growing wilder
on night walks passers-by eye us
warily move further over
in their lane something
has got into us or out of us
since we have come to this place
perhaps it is madness
perhaps we fantasized
these three small graves at the edge
of the woods dreamed
the three small pines
that grow now on top
all twisted together like
gnarled green gnomes or
children in abandoned play
that were not here until after
we came with love searching
for ways life renews it
for signs that it lasts
perhaps we grew them
with wanting these children
these trees this place
to keep patterns we've searched for
that slip from our grasp
when we think we've got hold
of them but seized now
this cold night with urgency
we cannot explain we begin
to call out all the signs
of life to one another
fearful moving toward winter
that something may be dying like
children never having been named
(reprinted with thanks from South Dakota Review)
