This Fear of Falling

You wake from dreams of expanding graveyards, a little smile playing on your lips and think, what? The dog leads me into fields abutting the old feeder pond which I've been avoiding since falling last week for fear the slick ice will send me toppling yet again which my back cannot bear. "Your core is compromised," F. said as we watched Sophia work the new horse and I was so fascinated by the concept I had to wander away in order to be quiet, in order to think it over. Actually, you can't say you're a body or a mind. No stars, no moon which for some reason makes me reconsider wordlessness. What I wouldn't give . . . The rooster offers up his throaty howl before the sun is even close to rising, reminding me yet again how unproductive the masculine inclination can be. It's worth remembering that silence precedes and in a sense allows for language. Foxes are red and, for me anyway, always female and usually fatal. A little snow falls, refusing description. In another life I will marry a sculptor and sweep her studio every evening and in the morning bring her tea before she works. In this one, there's this wordiness, there's this falling and this fear of falling, and there's this coming home in darkness in order to start again.