22

Push through a door left ajar,
through a winter abandoned
field straitjacketed.

Shatter through the rows,
stomp down the furrows.

Leave standing a single spike
where a daisy's glass eye is impaled.

Skim off the cataract of cream.
I remember her hands'
blue ice in the morning,

a familiar slap
of wind against my unshaven cheeks.
With the ache

hungering through her joints, with her
too sensitive
failing heart, the two of us

had braced against the hard snow coming.