The dreams of the old men are winter
snow, and the moon a fisherman casting down
an invisible line, the signatures of light
a first breath. Sorrow, it seems, is older
than the birds flitting from limb to limb.
Sometimes the blown pupil of the sky
becomes a vision, or the men awake
to count nine crows in nine days. And since
they have the salt lick of the years, their heartbeats
are a kind of human mathematics,
the arithmetic of snow smothering grass.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 18, Issue 1.
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