It swallows all it swallows, mass mistaken for mass,
swallows it all as storm surge swallows swaths of shoreline,
offers for the finding after only slivers of glass,
deflects off weathered edifice, trickles through tumbledown.
Deflects barely, a swallow off the surface of a farm pond.
Even on cold nights, not all brilliance mimics the crystalline.
Not all wisdom waits, not all that winters winters underground.
Unspoken, any summons to silent predation.
•
I name it Forsakenness Knob, that ridge where wind and loss merge,
where what I see looks like something beyond what sight can prove,
frost figured as so many bare branches. And omens,
my god, so many, like animal tracks, but they merge,
blown over by another snow. Body they once were, mind
they may since have melted into, omens may they prove.