.

unbound

morning snow is moving all about
an undistinguished skyandearth,
precipitating hollow tire sounds
that press it into crust and crush
its feathered incompossibilities
like Petrarch in the dark without
a sweet regard or steady face,
plus muffled footsteps setting pace
to words that shed the heart like
cad-yellow corn tossed slightly
into air-like contradictions
disappearing into white, first
falling lost but found again
by winter geese with black-expectant
eyes and veiled bills that open wide
with welcome gait


and then


salvation comes to all this blight,
the sacred-honking flocks are
just a shade of brownish-grey
to snow and so, he comes and
goes, each time another leaving,
beats his heart with outstretched
chest and wings away as if to rest
upon the day that lifts and glides
while I, with eyes iced open by
the sting of cold, no narrow vision
tracking flight as if to hope
until he disappears through
undistinguished earthandsky,
inhale the same reply,
"Don't worry, I'm not leaving yet,
my years fit yours like falling white."