Limefields,
I am so sorry that when I drove past you for the first time in four years that I was already passing a truck on the left
and I could not crane my neck
to see you
covered in snow
murmuring echoes of a summer
fragmented in memory









And instead I tunneled under burdened trees
creaking bridges
and a heavy sky
to places I'd stored in an old box in my
mind
so dusty with neglect that
standing in the icesheets
ankle deep in a winter's worth of time
I forgot why it was I came back









I felt a new wound open like a feather settling down or
a distant cat mewling in the early morning
so delicate
deliberate
as if I'd ordered it myself over the phone
watching it break the useless stitches
(and I can't sew anyway)
steady and entitled
I knew it was at once both the echo of old wounds
and a loss so foreign to my reflexes
that my dreams have now risen up against me
again.