All through Saturday morning
(the wrong time to walk)
frost hardened my steps.

I had no chance to call up
the forgiveness lost in endings
but rather followed any direction

like a cautious fox in steps.

The pines around trap ghosts
they gather round this curious accident

of me alone, slow on foot.

trying to make
something out of nothing

a funeral without a burial
the hard pull of tough bracken
a body of gnarled wood
some damp ash of remorse

so i stop and consider the flat river

people die and turn into stones
and trees and never return, that's all

imagined white skin
brittle as a buried plough,
winter stars have dragged

a sheet over poor us;
drifters along white rivers
crack the faces of pools,

cold smiles and frozen steps
throw out false sunlight,
we slide accordingly on glass
to the grace of old water

(for Daniel Philibert)

he is lost, he got lost
your room of milk glass
no longer refracts a ghost;

you are stone, part of a mountain,
eyeless on a cool green bed
unseen and unspoken, now saintly

sparrow-***** and clockwork driven,
you raced with short pace against
the old horse of ice and morning

and the lottery of gravel and slipping;
now I have two weights of good and bad,
two wet eyes, a long look upwards;

sleep over, sleep tight, wait.

the dead are circles of cold wax
torn from stars in glass
they hide behind ears
and hang like children on gates

a bone family on the hunt
wearing clothes that hang like martyrs

they do not benefit from sleep

the torn owl of autumn
hides behind a glass of rain
thin strips of the moon

hang like a tired curtain

behind the black hedge
voices seem serious and muted

we need to be empty to escape

this is now a dump
of shrivel and turn-in
the revenge of late months

the earth is tired
wet as a turned boat

after a battle this ground
is no longer holy
scattered with ribs it is shamed

across the lawn I hear voices
so I touch a found stone
in my pocket, just for me