Unfamiliar Tenderness

Wind begets an unfamiliar tenderness: kids coughing after midnight, the dog limping through pasture, and piles of books breaking old shelves. How exhausted one becomes in the field and hollow of metaphor! Snow before dawn hides the stars and I stumble as always, bereft of a useful compass. You can't weave a quilt from the idea of threads, and wordiness is just a tantrum seen another way. Falsehood by falsehood we reinvent the dark. Thoreau's delusion remains my fixed North, while Dickinson's grace is a kind of swallowed yellow. Be my stable, be my salty yes. The nineteenth century still sheds a welcome light. The old river runs its banks, indifferent to monks who confuse themselves with sand bags.