Would-Land

5 am.  One-quarter past.

Distant chimes inform me this.

A bell peal knells the mist.

And sunlight’s

not yet bludgeoning.

But some light gets blood going.  

Last night it was snowing

and now

every path’s a pall.

Though mine the only footfalls

at this hour of awe. Above

hangs a canopy of needle leaf.  

Below, the season’s

mean deceit—

that everything stays

white and clean.

It doesn’t, of course,

but I wish it. My prayers

are green with this intent,

imploring winter wrens

to trill and begging scuttling bucks

come back.  

There’s something that I lack.

A wryneck

bullet-beaks a branch.

His woodworm didn’t have a chance.

What I miss,

I’ve never had.

But I am not a ghost.

I am a guest.

And life is thirst,

at best.  

So do not strike me, Heart.  

I am, too, tinder.

I’m flammable

as birch bark, even damp.

Blue spruce, bee-eater—

be sweeter to me.

Let larksong shudder

to its January wheeze,

but gift these hands a happiness

just once.  

It is half passed.

And I am cold.

Another peal has tolled.

I’ve told the sum of my appeals.

I need not watch for fox.

They do not congregate at dawn.

But I would,

were I one.