Foxes Enter the Barn

Night winds. Terrors that stubbornly resist being symbolized. "You're a good boy and I love you" is not a bad mantra. Gulping coffee in the barn, listening to the last of the chickens scratch and mutter to itself. Rain turning to snow, snow to watery blossoms. Thought is the problem but also, is it really? Bales of hay on which we sat to talk. There is such a thing as happiness, it turns out. What are ancestors anyway. What is Fall River, Massachusetts? When kisses are hungry and what you learn about hunger by feeding them. Empty mailboxes, invisible missives. I remember in summer talking in parking lots after movies and whatnot, in no rush to get home, save in some deeply abstract sense that would not be comprehensible until my early fifties. The willow trees of childhood cast silver shadows, women unfurling from watery roots. Grace is abundant, is basically the lesson I resisted most. What else can we do? Foxes enter the barn and then flee as we approach. At night I remove my clothing, lay down on the bed, and in darkness wait for Her.