Low wail of night and its unseen chitterings, sweeps of tail
on dead leaves, slow
rustle and creep of ferns.
The dark on it’s own terms and us
racked out in a room
reeked with cedar and shaved wood, this handmade cabin.
Two windows, the pitch
of hot night, the creaky lean of spruce and fir. We’re restless,
years stacked behind like kindling.
Where have we left to go, together?
Two shrieks pack the dark; bird call, a human
timbre and panic. The night endures, slips onward, becomes all sound,
slick of stream-burrowed branches, rivulets tunnelling
thin-skinned trucks; drip, slide—
still outside’s parched and brittle, holds its breath,
waiting for rain.
At light, under the rattle and gab of waxwings and crows,
we find the river’s source in swells of sawdust
like sugar on the russet floor; carpenter ants, their constant fluid chewing.
Glossy heads big as thumbnails.
Morning expounds this
mystery— but what of those other walls
we’ll lean an arm through—
~ from Cityscapes in Mating Season (Signature Editions, 2017)
