The Ways

Rain on the ways north.

Rain

and horizon's eyes
finding

Renaissance
crevasses
in the most
present of
moments.

Our heels
press into the trail.

The river bank
bends

like light
through a lens

to surround
our honeymoon road;

The river bank
bows in the rain

and falters beneath the weight
of its own curve,

unfolds in its old, foolish years

a grace.

An insistence.

An imposition.

The earth
holds to itself
an exhausted world

reckoned larger
on the inside
than the out.

When we rest
I will
attain for us a tale

from between the lengths
and distances
we have gathered
to our cuffs:

A man leans over kindling to
strike the back of his knife
against flint.

There is a shadow; a bear;
a struggle —
something
unaccounted for
and sudden —
ruined factories
and inflated prices.

Beacons bloom open their light
on the unfurled shores of great lakes.

A rescue comes.

Tight-knotted questions
beat with the wind
against star-strewn, abandoned
rafters.

Doorposts.

You remember
door
posts.

And then
up again.

Up again,
and
feet to it
at dawn.

It makes sense.
(All of it.)
The way
iron buried in the earth
betrays the compass.

The way
trackage is abandoned
and the report of it
goes unpublished.

The way
one moment at
dawn publishes
ancient traces
through
wheat and forest.

The days
press suddenly and cold
well past our recollection
of crossings
and clearings.

We said, "North"
but may have
meant west.

East.

South.

The Road has carved Itself into Itself.

Rain abandons the path
that blossoms
out from beneath the trees.

We're warm

We find warmth

We are reconciled.