By Subtraction

The wind shakes the chimes

into the siding, and the dog shakes too

though he doesn’t wake you

as I carry you to the bedroom. Small mouth

sipping breath, you are fish-strange,

bejeweled in the dimness of the microwave’s

nightlight. As I turn my back to the bulb

I make your form in my arms a dark weight

but you are no anchor. Together

we are sloops trailing a tiny wake in the carpet.

In the dark it’s hard to navigate the furniture

so I count distance—five paces

from the tile to the sofa. From the sofa,

twelve to the hall. I’m subtracting

my steps to see what’s left. The things

that burden me, like our lame dog’s shattered nail,

blood on the carpet from his paces

to the food dish, our drafty house, all are outpaced.

There are no barriers, and I step over

the hound’s dozing form as a quick gust cuts

dead branches from the pine and the drifts

lock our cars in. But I’m still counting—

the none-stars in the winter sky,

each hazily wrapped and strobing. The far bell

over the deep waters of your sleep. Two steps to the corner

where there are no animals nor animal danger. Two

to the bed where behind us the shadow of the dog

could be distant hills, where the clouds disassemble,

where your breaths pull the warmth of the room in

and where my face, my eyes are the glint of ore

from a country far away and known only in a language,

light as the syllables of exhalation.

Source: Requiem for the Orchard (University of Akron Press, 2010)