is illness snow calling birds seeking one another, flapping nearly round from tree to tree, this sort of so is illness. Or is it flyers falling through cold slices of soft forms lighting wings upon, weighted barrier bring flight flung as falling cold, deer in woods, curled in spring and summer, autumns' leap from hunger sat on bark stands, holding stillness, ready with aiming fires back home, cabin kept, barn dressed bled, for this is the way does and bucks go down, run in winter, curled as spring tendrils and summer clover, autumn's range careful, ears are large, and they, still. So this is food, ill wheat, wanton loaves, for fishing is capped with ice skins along stiller depths, slower fish set, their cold beings full Hunger grows, slammed above these winters held inside caverns that rumble in warmer days. We graze in boxes, feet locked between linear feet opening boxes, of this, and cans of that,
so this is
less than
illness, more than hope,
pressing existence through
stables empty with cold, absent-
named curriers who, years past, would
hitch their mouths through metal bits, leather
stapes, shoed, combed, braided, presenting bells,
one or more, when distance was surer than now, doubling
back upon itself, crumpled bay, gutted dairy cats, large enough
grown forest beds, tree limbs' holes down tree's root, beneath does'
house. While in this linear space, in boxes, closets glut themselves drifts,
no one way of bringing, one way of hunger, no one way settling air with moths'
carcasses feeding exits for remaining in-edibles, buttonless lips,
pockets pocked, dis-eased as wire tries and plastic shapes
shoulder too small or wide for natural where.