A Malign Enchantment

I slip a little going out back with hay, late January thaws turning pools of melted snow to ice you don't see when you hurry. A thinning copse of trees through which the neighbor's kitchen lights can be seen, a reminder that solitude has nothing to do with geography. It's not that I'm lonely so much as waking up from a malign enchantment, victim of a second-hand spell. Learning at last how to talk directly to the Lord? Sentences audition for the morning poem, clearing their throat, trying to impress me. Mockery is a form of indecision, pretending it's not you but another who made the wrong choice. Where once there was night, now there is deeper night, or more night, and insomnia remains our biological king. We for whom winter is a beginning, we for whom beginnings are are not enough, and we for whom "not enough" remains a viable strategy. Four days running I wake up and can't remember my dreams despite a pervasive sense that remembering them matters. Who needs ghosts when you've got clocks and calendars? Legendary scabs follow me into the same old desert, bloodless but loyal. A prayer is anything that moves you, and a hymn is not what we actually sing but rather what makes us want to make a joyful noise at all. On that note, this. This this.