Soul

It is not the angel riding a goat, trying to make him go. It does no work with refusal or guilt, which loves only its contorted self. But fancies instead my terrier’s long pink tongue, how it teases out the bone’s marrow, tasting with all its muscle. The angel is silver, but so is the goat and the box on which they perch, a Victorian gesture in the mansion where I spent the fall. They have followed me home, their permanent shine presuming, while around me, everything withered, slowly froze, and began its turn toward white. The snow is nothing but a great emptiness, and I’m tired of trying to find a secret there. But look—one leaf skittering across the glazed surface catches its stem to stand upright, the shape of a hand waving.