last year

to lose field
and friend to the same emptiness
is to unyield.

to receive stone
in place of children
or wheat

to grow old
in this way

is to harden.

one night reeling
from my long dead father's brandy
i unspun the straw from its huge
yellow wheels

scattering its gold like a halo
around the barn
until a strafing sound covered the ground.

without material
the barn swayed,

wicker as a petering out
of oaks.

before she died and after
my wife's body was like a conch,
her name unlike a name,

her voice heard
in all the almanacs of ear pressed
to cold tabletop.

if a moon finally messiahed
down to the dirty ground,
between here and the woods

there might be promise.

the half-dark of a cave,
a room's half,
when music being played

stops.

the spaces
pile up
to be waded through,
as if prayed or mooned over,

full to
threshing.

the evening pours out
the last of its water.

if the moon would only appear,
spill its oils.

the barn
might hold all of last year's
thunder.

like the wall of a canyon
that gets all the light
one season

and none
the next

i layer with silence.
i wait for the ground.

most days i circle my acres
then rest on the fringes
of the woods.

tonight my empty brown shoes
are a query.

filling them would be
a querying.

the firelight falls
upon the floorboards
like dogs.

the hall clock is battered
by its own purpose,

ticking
like
one small coin of fake money
dropped onto another.

i wait at last for the snowfall,
or a portion of field
to unpurse.

the result is
a toppling in either direction.

she emptied herself into
our life

and i once determined
to widow her.

i was young.
now i hear cawing.

i am in the territories
of blackbirds--

bare woods and a field of rubble
that has no room
for anything but ghosts.