we wait in a surge,

we wait in a surge,

skinning ourselves on our
selves our scented central communion
of days and nights and crap and craziness and
shattered beds and cracks just cracks just
everywhere--

moving into the signals you'd mistake
fear for hate, love for disdain,
a brisk step to the side for a sign that
i can no longer stand just there
on the sides, can't

the light do us revelatory favors? can't
we avoids lines and guides and things that are just
and peaceful and ideal and all other things you need
a ruler and a strange sort of focus in order
to define, to stretch out

across our empty landscape, not broken
but wiped bare from
the harshest weather, the heaviest
calamities in the sense
that the ice has come back

for another season, covering over
the rivers and the stone, freezing
the seeds and the last roots and
chilling us with thoughts
of never returning.