The End of Threads

In Advent owls come out of the forest to rest all day in maple trees behind the pasture. Sentinels, emissaries. Revenants. Language is no longer the answer nor even especially helpful. Irish Setters from childhood, nobody suffered more. Sunday afternoon in the hayloft, potatoes and grains stored everywhere, books everywhere. Ten thousand prisms. She removes her clothing gazing out a north-facing window, full of light. The end of seeking, the end of threads, but not the end of being given to her giving herself. Bethlehem and its famous manger are not the condition of peace to which they point. It took me lifetimes to understand this, I'm sorry. Moving gently in each other, the many mountains in us moving slowly to the sea. Earlier at dawn beside the river dark water flowed between ice-covered stones. I was here once and knelt. I was here once and left, wandered a long time before stumbling back, wingless and poor. From a distance now I watch the one who bends toward her thighs, whispering "almost there, almost there."