POEM FROM SANIBEL ISLAND

for SD, Winter Solstice, 2003


Walking the frozen trails
of the County Grounds
(now excavated and
smoothed of their history)

the narrow ice-tamped
runs in fields of hip-high drifts,
burdock and milkweed husks
stubborn in the wind,

you walk ahead, fists buried
in your pockets, your arms
scored by stigmata, burning
even in this savage cold,

you trudge along, stingy
with your secrets, the past,
the unimaginable story,
the unspeakable crime,

and yet, behind you, stumbling,
I keep asking, lest the words
spilling from your blue lips,
the burning anger, the raging

star beneath the skin, should
suddenly stop. You let blood
speak but it does not speak
the truth you know you must

shape with guttural sounds,
while overhead as we trudge
in the angry ghosts of breath,
a big hawk chases us, his cold

eye glaring, his yellow beak
knifing the solstice air:
is he a menace? or
guardian? and below us

as we crunch and grudge,
we see runnels of mice,
like veins in the ice, rivulets,
passageways dug through

the snow skin, shadows
scurry in the cold, let's admit
it, we came here on the
shortest day to witness

the death of the year,
the death of the world,
to punish ourselves, to
reach beyond the darkness

and the fear, beyond
the ice and the terrible
cold, to somehow lay bare
the great betrayal

and the unspoken
remains, to begin again.
Tell me your story
one more time, and this

time, when you ask me
why I care, think about
those trails, how much
our fingers ached, your

trembling lips, that hawk,
those mice running under
us--the stubbornness
and the world's last gasp.

When you ask me why I care
think about the stories
buried all around us,
those who could not give voice

to the truth of their lives
and how all of that does not
matter any more to anyone
and that when I say it matters

to me I mean it, it
means trust me and what
I say, it means I am here
and I will follow.