don’t panic; it’s bracken on a
trip, gathering time and
binding it; bracken has

its own calendar, tears and rain
and a little sunlight as black
as when black slugs carry it

around; ah, hear the tranquil
fronds and the undermost brown
seconds of the spores, ticking

still; perhaps they remember
how hidden we lay, how
hidden in places where

no people ever go we lay,
before we were born at last
and crept out; I look

back uneasily and the snow,
falling so thinly here this
morning, wakens carefully

and melts; a meadow lies
spread with lapwings; I walk
toward the sound; the ice

crackles icily, just as when
tears were once to he crushed
like pearls and strewn

over the patient; at last
the body is so salty that
its long story dissolves

the mirror; a little lint from a
quilt my mother must have shaken
disappears, and childhood

spreads ahead; over
by the window a little sunlight
is folded into place in the curtain

evening June sixteenth