The muse hasn’t abandoned me entirely.
__________________________

Certainty

1.
Breach – 
tree-spined, arcing down the Four Mile,
north, toward the river.

dis   /
	connect 

snowfall from swerving ridgeline
hill from hollow
moon from fractured day
limping home on splints of headlight

2.
Kitchen light
imp of wick and tallow
warms the plane and groove of
hand-tooled oak.

Our grandfathers are here, 
quiet as cornbread, completed by the near
silence of supper,
		forks clinking at a plate of
ham and black-eyed peas

death and taxes and 
tomorrow morning,

not much else.

3.
The air is empty of all but wind
scutching 
	the weeds at midwinter.

There is nothing here for a million years
					except
a quiet turning of the wheel
and nothing to notice the nothingness.

This woman I have always known,
in from her tramp through the woods
knocks the last clump of daylight from her boots

sets them inside the kitchen door....