January: Year-day 8

             
                                          
                                          
January: Year-day 8
                                                        
We are slipping into summer.  I may never
finish this poem.  The eyes of dogs inhabit
the leaves.  Nowhere is the sky so clever
as on clear cold days in winter.  The rabbits
shake in their holes.  A scoop of darkness rounds
the crescent bowl of the moon.  Clutch yr nerves.
We're sliding into the rain.  The guard rail bounds
from the woods.  Open, close.  My vision swerves.
                                                        
If peonies of ice bloom before us,
it is only because the ants of fiction
crawl.  Nothing usual has a place to go.
                                                      
The consternation of fetuses thrust
to unjust deaths.  The isobars of diction.
And the wind chill's more// than fifty below.
                                                 
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