Winter Journal: Wind Thumbs through Woods

slant hand of beech leaves shag of oaks before water When did you go missing from me? That passage between limb and slipped skin gouged hickories, the ermine-bright birch through all that is traveling slopeward circleting leaf through branch weave corymbs of curled leaves lone cedar document rising Through trees that far land moves descant the old rusts and pastes undershined Don’t you ever think this is so strange? the sibilant drift of dried leaves the coming down all to some shambles the encroachments on the innermost things Don’t you feel how everything is strained beyond certain remembering? The limbs break their fragile whisks into The sky is a shroud pulled up over Each leaf of the beech has its wisdom held fast its little death ship I cannot wake up from inside this burrow into fundaments of leaves The cold drills down into the stone the almost-extracted green the bird cloaked up under the ribs the dull gleams