Noel

All that prairie,
then, and still,
gathering itself
to charcoal lines of
brook and stream,
and shoulders put to snow
and dusk;
And all those nights, same,
their flickerings and
shadows and
whispers and
hope-holding
silences
spilling to void, taking form
in recollection
and retracements,
incessant old ways
cutting over the grain
in the dark.

Each of those
damnable nights
hoped to brick
a testament closed,
but could not quite:

Those days brimmed instead
with winter,
and ill-advised journey.

Locals lit the lift-bridges
like Christmas trees,

And we stayed put.

At night,
We dreamt
the horizons
we displaced in the day;

We awoke in the places
we dreamed.

And there, the shadow of something immense
on the gravel two-lane:
an ambulance overturned;
wheels spinning, grasping
after purchase like the hands
of a broken watch.

We came from among
the edges
and gathered, weeds all,
to the banks of that great road.

Good news.

The Child's eyes are open.

He searches each our faces in the pre-dawn light.