1
The woods an empty house
no longer aching to be lived in.
Smoke roams the earth:
the dead ones, still looking
for ways to help.
2
You can pick something up,
the fragment of a dead leaf,
a stick, a shard of bark.
The days are little villages
in grief’s hinterlands.
3
Soon, if you hold still,
you are indistinguishable
from the things of winter.
Clean slant of light on clay.
A kernel flaring in the fallen leaves.
4
The trees talk different dialects
of wind. The last leaves fall
and also the pine needles fall,
three-pronged and golden.
There might be enough time.
5
The trees need their rest
she would have said.
It’s time to stay in one place for a while.
Let the pale things have their dreams
in the dark earth.
6
No thought could have brought you here,
for whom I’m dark and still.
It wasn’t my blood I heard
but you, by yourself and shining,
striding this way