Joanna Klink

It began in a foyer of evenings The evenings left traces of glass in the trees A book and a footpath we followed Under throat-pipes of birds We moved through a room of leaves Thin streams of silver buried under our eyes A field of white clover buried under our eyes Or a river we stopped at to watch The wind cross it, recross it Room into room you paused Where once on a stoop we leaned back Talking late into daylight The morning trees shook off twilight Opening and closing our eyes auroras Beyond groves and flora we followed a road Dotted with polished brown bottles, Scoured furrows, a wood emptied of trees It was enough to hollow us out The evenings left grasses half-wild at our feet Branches with spaces for winds The earth changes The way we speak to each other has changed As for a long while we stood in a hall full of exits Listening for a landscape beyond us

Lately, too much disturbed, you stay trailing in me and I believe you. How could I not feel you were misspent, there by books stacked clean on glass, or outside the snow arriving as I am still arriving. If the explanations amount to something, I will tell you. It is enough, you say, that surfaces grow so distant. Maybe you darken, already too much changed, maybe in your house you would be content where no incident emerges, but for smoke or glass or air, such things held simply to be voiceless. And if you mean me, I believe you. Or if you should darken, this inwardness would be misspent, and flinching I might pause, and add to these meager incidents the words. Some books should stay formal on the shelves. So surely I heard you, in your complication aware, snow holding where it might weightless rest, and should you fold into me—trackless, misspent, too much arranged—I might believe you but swiftly shut, lines of smoke rising through snow, here where it seems no good word emerges. Though it is cold, I am aware such reluctance could lose these blinking hours to simple safety. Here is an inwardless purpose. In these hours when snow shuts, it may be we empty, amounting to something. How could I not wait for those few words, which we might enter.