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