Because the snow had not come,

winds not

Because your mouth was the mountain

we walked

your words, my words,

the thin light-reaching trees

Because everything that lives was singing

and we heard rejoice rejoice

(though everything that lives was dying or dead and singing please)

Because I could not love you more,

though I tried

Fires of rose-hips and saff ron

Your mouth, a pyre built

by my two hands

Because of this, I sang

though the ice was coming

though all songs were air

And did you sing back?

Chorus to chorus, refrain

(funeral dirge, fugue—refrain)

Did you sing?

I could not hear you over the dry ground

over cracks of flame

the hawk feeding her screeching young

the rat, being eaten

Here was the hour, here was the day:

& I would not turn from my thoughts,

my looping cadence call

I would not hush

How worry ruins every

love I would not

stop

I would not

Night—an infant suckling

I once held her in the way mothers do

happy to be the filth river that buoys her

and that she was made to cross

Once your mouth was the ridge we walked

and I was the dry grass singed

I, the rat and the hawk

All enemies of and not of the flesh

But now I'm too tired to give birth

Do you want to know how the snow came?

The rains, for weeks the rains

Green flooding streets and houses

Floating buses, shoes, floating beds

The snow came the only way it could:

when everything left

and how I was afraid