This place at the beginning of winter flares
until its last yellow is earth,
and you know what is not yours:
everything, even yourself.
trying to find words, or not.
You step to the window, inside and outside dark,
and lift it to the first brief chill
of far snow. Shapes lurch through the woods,
and their cries threaten as they go.
Dedicated to what there is
of naked vine and leaf, you wait
lost in the silence the word is.
Read Selected Poems