Poor world, the violet insect-o-cutor glow
of streetlights on the fallen snow is something like
my need of him who sleeps nearby, but mostly not.
Mostly it is itself as cars search roundabouts
and underpasses on a mid-December night,
the quiet mine, the stealth of my approaching joy.
The superstition I am felt before I’m seen,
trudging along the hummocked road towards one door,
leaving behind the death of heretofore – that’s life.
Some curtains aren’t yet drawn. Unfaring families
look out and mark the grey, possible cat. The Weird.
He is the shape of long but not forgotten fears –
of thrall and invasion, the wolf, the brand, the flame
striking the thatch; old ghosts in a new territory.
The air clears. By a hole-punched moon I see a ream
of false prospects, the other world, white, coining it.
Visible breath, tonight, give me no miracle,
no six zeroes, but just a step, the ultra-blank
inheritance of those who leave and then come back.