How lucky I am tonight to be holding a lantern 
at this railroad crossing in the middle of America 
and not clinging to a leaky raft on the north Atlantic,

To get to this place, 
you must go through the village which is above.
If you find yourself before the mountain

For all I know I was meant to be one of those marchers
into a microtonal near-future whose pile has worn away—

All day, the colorless heat
of too much summer:
parcels of darkness

It feels like a door in the light
through which the mind might pass at any moment,

Whatever I hoped to believe,
I never imagined
the pitfall of consolation:

He is waiting for the story to begin:
a road through the meadows, a ship’s light, all those
signals in the grass he has to learn

The mice are back;
                             I leave them
crusts and pine nuts

My eldest son rolls over in his sleep
and, like an actor mid-soliloquy,
he murmurs, “Nothing—”

Had she not lain on that bed with a boy
All those years ago, where would they be, she wondered.
She and the child that wouldn’t have been but was now