Snow falling through the cold dark
and the meager light of streetlamps
changes our old block of bungalows,
traces oaks and maples, erases curbs,
hushes the traffic, and leaves an odd
familiar path toward the pines
beyond our dead-end. Tonight rabbits
slipping from burrows hope in the white
(if rabbit minds hope). What hawk-fear
haunts their hungry quickness? Words
I once used to ward off death
have slipped into the margins since
the last funerals and I have none
left for you, dear one, for your frost
rouged profile, though the night
stirs an old desire to make sense.
Our crunching steps, our silent breath
puffing in the air before us, we walk
as into a picture of our lives, into all
that will go unremembered when we
(soon enough) succumb to cancer-hawk,
heart-hawk, time-hawk and our syntax
and perspicacity count for less than
the taloned prey’s blood dripped
on the snow; yet we see the falling,
the bright slow falling on our home
and from dark silence, we speak.