and all

Sometimes, even when I am happy, I am wondering whether there isn't something more than this. Here is the one who makes me laugh, who has shelves of books on art and who makes prints that are so lovely, who I'm tied to by many small strings.

And then you, with your black hair and your pale skin and your freckles and your long love affair and your hours and hours of distance.

And then another, who speaks languages like me and loves them like me, who is witty and unapproachable and a bit broken and therefore all the more attractive.

It's spring; I'm here.


[St. Stephen's Day
AL

All winter long I can hear the cries of birds in the thatch.
They come down from the north to hide

in eves, wind forgotten, the lake looming
out of memory and their bones beating with blood.

Where is the one who will hold birds in his hands
for me? While on earth I sing and practise Advent

I look for the face in the rafters. Drifting to me
little pieces of hay, flecks of peat ash promise something:

maybe it is spring.
I hold with waiting. I hold with hands
that are larger than mine, spanning the shores

of the great Lakes. I hold with the white snow pushing back
the sky and the empty hours between houses.

Fill up the rooms with singing alone, I say. Who knows
what will thaw in six months? Make the song

and eat it yourself. Thus live the birds in the thatch, wrens.
If I dream in the smoke-draped room I dream

a little boy to dance under a cape of straw
the hushing
wings built full of air, scuff of foot at the door

(I am never afraid to open--)]