By now the snow is easing
the live nerves of the wire fence
and the firs,
softening the distances it falls through,
laying down a rightness,
as in the spackled whites,
the woodgrains of a room’ s hush
before music,
before a lush legato in whose unctions
the excruciations ease,
as in the first
the froth of noise
the undersides of the cedars make,
the windblown dark that hints
and fails for hours at effacement —
maybe I could claim it isn’ t
praying, but it’ s asking,
at the least, begging
that these lungfuls of this blackness
eat whatever keeps on swelling
and collapsing in my chest, and be done
with it, no more noise
left hanging in the spaces
between brake lights than a smothered rush
that sounds like suffering
up a little,” he says,
shutting the rusted tailgate,
“maybe at least lean
down from your high horse
and look busy,” picking up
his work gloves and his spade.
“You’ re not the only
hick on the clock
with an education,” he says, half-
laughing, half-wheezing,
and spits, his bottom lip bulging
with a load of Skoal,“even
if you do think pretty highly
of your poetry.”
