WINTER LAMENT
This day is no different than yesterday,
that I should make it the beginning.
The world is damp with the odor of winter
and my eyes burn with a blue halo of late news.
Windows have grown higher. I look
for secret edges where doors might appear.
My poems gather behind lips
of women awakening
in the dead hours of bitterness.
Unwilling to speak, the women frighten
into the language of rain.
Upstairs the future takes no shape,
like a wished miracle that forgets to arrive.
In a landscape closing in,
messages go up in smoke,
and something terribly human
wakes my hand.