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| Shadows and snow falling on the frozen stone reflecting pool |
Stir Crazy
There is nothing
to do but learn and wait, return to work
on what remains. Seed will sprout in the scar.
Though death is in the healing, it will heal.
Wendell Berry
The Slip
Not a dying no but while I slept and slept
a covering of snow a quiet setting down
a settling on and a bite of maybe
it’s here for the staying a while. I watched
while I was awake, and from a window,
the snow that kept us in and under a newish
roof, watched it fall and fall and fall onto
the ground and then onto itself and I thought
of the paths I’d have to make to the road
to get out tomorrow and I thought of getting
it done in enough time to set out early
and I thought of the girl who a few
years ago went out in it on a day like today
she went out anyway and managed
getting there and doing what she’d a mind
to do and driving home was a negotiation
she couldn’t settle on. And it snowed and snowed
on her upturned truck in the marsh and if
she was alive going in it was still water high enough
in the boggy moss to come up and slip in
it’s own hello slip in between the door frame
the broken window the two or three boxes
of cereal now on the roof or floating near
her head and then in its own calm way
because isn’t it that the natural rest state of water
move into her and settle down the way snow
settles down on the warm warm still just
leaving autumn ground, so close to fall
to make us reckless to make us miss
the bridge to make us lose ground and turn
in and over in the air and land a hundred
yards from the bank and lay and wait
until help came but too late and I say
all these years later stay home in the snow
look out the window pull your hair make plans
to shovel the driveway when it’s all over slip into
a bit of sleep and while you sleep dream
but dream enough just enough to want to stay
(later) awake.
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