Coming Out of The Cold

There will always be nights
like this one, where sleep won't
come and the worries of the day
lay heavy upon the heart like the ice-laden

branches weighing down the magnolia,
taking at random the most frail limbs
of the dogwood tree whose bottom most
branch held the last gift your brother gave

us, the Christmas he knew he was leaving,
when his body and breath failed him and his hands
could not sustain the work of building a birdhouse
from the gourds his summer garden laid heavy

upon him, wrecked as he was with cancer, weariness
cradling him. I could go gather the remains, fashion
wreaths from the remnants, make a cornucopia
from the rotted shell he gave us, but what difference

would that make now, him seven years gone,
no birds ever having roosted in his attempts,
you sleeping away the night, his passing too real
for you to even visit in your dreams, me only

giving him this space in my own failed attempt
at sleep, loving him more in death that I could
in life, my intentions pure but wholly misguided.

Dead Can Dance Yulunga

. . . a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door.
And of all the forgotten faces.

Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not
know our mother's face; from the prison of her flesh have we come
into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth.

Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into
his father's heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?

O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this
most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we
seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven,
a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. [Where? When?]

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.

Thomas Wolfe
Look Homeward Angel

The Smallness of Large

If it weren't for Molly,
I would not be outside
on this cold night, head

tilted back like a Pez dispenser,
tilting back down again as she
continues her business, nothing

coming from my mouth
but the warmth of my own
breath, me blowing out over

and over again to see the whiteness
of living, looking up (to be polite
while she's in the middle

of her business) once more to notice
the outlines of constellations,
the vast emptiness of a sky

filled with the appearance
of small, the largeness of being
reduced to negligible.

The Remains

I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets.
I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road.
At night I turn back the clocks;
I open the family album and look at myself as a boy.

What good does it do? The hours have done their job.
I say my own name. I say goodbye.
The words follow each other downwind.
I love my wife but send her away.

My parents rise out of their thrones
into the milky rooms of clouds. How can I sing?
Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same.
I empty myself of my life and my life remains.

Mark Strand

Le Faux Miroir
Rene Magritte, 1928