XXII

Those long afternoons we trudged
through the North Woods.
Some days it was insufferable,
the cold & still we traveled through
the abyss where the Black Cherry, Pin Oak,
& Red Maple were stripped of their clothes
& the wind slapped our faces, the furies
blotting our eyes, no foreseeable
path in the snow & still we made the journey.
Sometimes we stumbled upon more
than we wanted (how to explain a body
with a blanket over a subway grate for warm
thor the babble of the mind’s asylum, those decorated
with gold of the privileged, those without shoes). Still
it was like an accident of joy, like a chorus gathering,
like a gift from a mysterious god,
it was like the unknown whisper of trees in the park’s
forest. It was the shadow
life I feared.