What Ends Goes On

There are stains on my glasses which blur my vision and so I take off my glasses. It does not snow. One walks with the dog, concentrating on each step, as if it mattered. When you are here I am happy and when you are not, I am filled with longing.

Delicious longing. A light snow dusted the manure, the chickens stayed out all day, carrying on about who knows what. Lately, I have become obsessed with the movement of horses. The movement of what is internal?

Rhyme is a sort of movement, as is guilt. She drank tea instead of coffee, picked at the cantaloupe and said at last that a clean sharp break was needed. I do not miss you when you are not here because I know that my awareness of you will always return. It's like radios, in a way.

It's like growing up thinking that you're powerless and then all of a sudden somebody asks for a favor only you can give. This writing, this way. A few days without food, a few days of watching each breath, and then one rises instead of topples into language. I miss you.

The same preponderance of crows, the same romantic mourning doves. My sisters rarely enter the poetry, which is only strange when you try to reason it out. My hands trailed across the whale's slow-drying body and my brain insisted on gratitude, which made no sense, and even now I can't stand writing it. What observes what ends goes on.