When we wake
snow will lie on the sills. There are things
happening when no one knows it.
I returned from the west finding the trees bare.
With the first cold my children came,
I don’t know where they learn their songs from.
I know the dead have little to say to us,
but speak like they were the same, like clocks
scuttling into the dark with the same nothings.
Later perhaps they turn aside to a place
where they no longer need us to listen, or go out
when they are at peace like burned wicks.
What we don’t know yet is no matter.
I pray not to a god but to stone,
to the grass, to the running hooves of the horses.