February 1990

Master—

Today has been a fair day, very still & blue. Tonight the snow will hunch on branches, shifting slightly like chicks hatched in a metal drawer bunched in rows, on the way to slaughter, incubating.

The oak trees—ruined bare—tower in the sky like stick figures, graceless in wind, as schizophrenic children draw themselves as sticks, plugged in. How I long to see you there at twilight in the door, your old oak chair pulled up by the window, counting the white hours until Spring.

Sometimes I think I will be broken by your lukewarm Hand. Sometimes the triremes of the redundant Rush row over me, a Sabbath day of ritual, a few sweet hours, groomed as the fields combed over in rows of alfalfa wheats, burnt down by Winter, ragged as Crows. If I could have your Hands on me, I would wish them on my face, cupped in the head’s heart shape, unpunishing.