Outside in the yard, our dogs are kicking snow
into specks of light,
like foals they tear through the marrow-
cloak of light, they break the light
in their mouths
to warm their throats
as the snow rises around them,
as the snow pinpricks
the window of this room
like memory behind an eye and I
can feel the movement beginning,
the swell, the breaking
into: the back door opening
and winter light opening wider
through the door
and the dogs running through it,
shaking it into the house, breathing
it into your palm, their scent
of cold and earth like bodies
too long in the ground,
they break the earth around us
in their coming.
And then you bring your hand to your face,
your hand an invention of atoms
you brush across your forehead,
and then your hand
a sea boiling across
the back of my neck,
the forest there collapsing in a wave
and all the animals running
toward the edge to flee
the devastation:
a particle
that rises to float
behind my eye—