We gathered our water
and packs at daybreak
to hike hand in hand
toward the distant ruin—
a tall stone chimney planted
on otherwise empty acreage,
a kudzu-covered tower,
the ghost of a farmhouse
now a home to field mice,
black beetles and bats,
with bricks the color
of weathered blood,
vertebrae stacked
a century and a half ago
by a stonemason’s craft,
still solid and bonded
despite the slow decay
of arthritic mortar.

How long have we
walked together?

The morning
is all we have
left to ponder.
We walk for hours;
the chimney grows
larger at our approach.
I want to ask you
a question about
the night we met,
what you said
just before I held
you for the first time,
but then I catch sight
of my hand and realize
I am walking alone,
moving inexorably
toward a ruination
of my own making.
How could I have been
so careless? Unable
to stop, every step
strips something away:
my hair thins and falls,
as white and weak
as sickled wiregrass;
another step and my
body atomizes into
the stuff of stars,
pollen scattered
on a rising wind.

So this is what it
feels like to decay.

By the time I reach
the ruin I am mostly
cinder and ash,
a sorry vestige
sown in a quiet field,
a forgotten landmark
that strangers will visit,
if only to contemplate
how the evening fog
spindles like smoke
along the enduring
column of my spine.

Don’t confuse the hypnotic
hum of highway traffic
with the anesthetic lull
of your dreams deflating.

Don’t confuse the murmuration
of small black flies above the bowl
of rotting fruit with the devastation
you feel in the hard pit of your soul.

Don’t confuse the blinding eyes
of white vapor streetlights
with the coruscating promise
of an unmolested path home.

Don’t confuse the empty auto lot
at the edge of town with an orchard:

tonight the gravel of crushed bones
blossoms in a shower of moonlight,
the interminable hush of a hard rain.

She left on a winter afternoon,
leaving her cup of chamomile

tea cooling on the kitchen table.
A cough of car exhaust and she

was gone.

She left behind only certain things:

a thin procession of dresses
hung in the bedroom closet,

a strand of costume pearls
curled in an unworn shoe,

a tube of coral lipstick abandoned
on the bureau beside her hairbrush.

Today the crocuses began to bloom.
I can bear the things she left behind,

but the warble of the robin’s song
is the sound of love as it unwinds.

I
Among ten thousand trees,
the transformation begins
with the blink of a snowbird.

II
Snowbirds live.
Snowbirds die.
Wing tips span
the seam between
egg and bone.

III
I baked my snowbird
in a pie; the oven wanted
something beautiful to eat.

IV
A nest is a clever home.
At night, house windows
shine like yellow puzzles
for the snowbird to solve.

V
I steal the notes
of the snowbird’s song,
shackle myself to the silence
that blooms between the notes.

VI
Abandoned women
in thrift store robes,
abandoned houses
warmed by bedroom fires—
the snowbird understands.

VII
The mouth of a snowbird
is small but mellifluous.

VIII
Children with dusty fingers
color sidewalks with chalk.
Snowbirds alight there and dip
their wings into an apocalyptic sun.

IX
When the snowbird departs,
the branches of the juniper
languish like bitter crescents of lime,
ice cubes melting in a glass of gin.

X
To decipher snowy syntax,
etch lines on a sheet of ice;
get on all fours and trace
snowbird tracks in snow.

XI
Rain is turning to sleet.
The snowbird is awake.

XII
She crosses her legs
on the velvet settee,
exhaling cigarette smoke
in rings across the room.
The ashtray is a crystal grave
of severed snowbird beaks.

XIII
It was winter all afternoon. Across the city,
chimneys are spilling snow into the sky.
A snowbird shivers in the fireplace.
I close my eyes and gather kindling.

In the late night light
of the bedroom lamp

you watch me watch you
undo your favorite dress;

you don’t stop until
the garnet necklace

around your neck
is the only thing

left in the world for me
to touch that is not you.

Here I am in the yard again,
shovel in one hand, plastic
bag in the other, trudging
toward the fence in my slippers,
determined to not feel squeamish.

The dog has been scolded
and brought into the house;
she whimpers at the back
window, watching my progress
across a quarter-acre of dormant
grass dusted with morning snow.

Up close, fixed by death,
the squirrel bares its teeth,
white and sharp, its eyes
the size of juniper berries.

I tilt it into the bag,
blood smearing
the rusted shovel,
and turn back, surprised
by the heft of lifelessness,
how dead weight pulls
a broken body down.

Gravity, it occurs to me,
is a relentless undertaker.

I walk and the bag swings
like a soft pendulum
banging against my leg,
counting out my steps,
confounding the dog.

You see, our yards are
nothing but undug graves.

If gravity is our undertaker,
then physics has pocketed
the stars, wearing a funeral
suit blacker than outer space.

The spiders of sleep
are weaving words
in the back of her throat.

I listen to the sibilant
murmur of her dreams

unfurling.

She recites non sequiturs
to darkened walls, her bed

a stage draped in velvet
curtains of disassociation.

Incessant spinners,
spiders embroider

forsaken moonlight
into feathery pillow talk.

I am an audience of one.

When her monologue
is done, I blanket the bed sheets
with bouquets of bloodless roses.

Ashamed, I wait for more.

Her dreams scratch
at the face of the moon,
inscribing an encore.