Storied Lives
Snow is a kindness to the old.
It covers the bones of winter.
Well-worn paths become sudden-new
and strangers speak to one another
convinced that somewhere they were friends.
Memory releases earlier worlds
innocent of endings. Sound
gathers on horizon’s spine.
Chords of sunlight sing the morning in
and the skin of earth is beautiful.
As the traveler moon
floats into view
nights are long and longer
than the long wind
sweeping over prairies
and wind has no history.
Moment by moment
the old are moving out
one leaves soon another sooner
stepping lightly lightly
to taste the dark particular.
Voices hum in the wind
and the old do nothing.
They lean upwards
laying secrets bare to the moon
to the snow falling in alphabets of silence
and the small mercies of the stars.