We smell
woodsmoke at dusk
a cold touch of
future
through the windows
And in the spaces between
our even
breathing
I grow older, see the fall
of snow against my
will, hear
the clear, strange cries
from the
shifting ice as we walk by,
away from the warm kitchen, cracking-
And there is a certain tree here
thrown down and fading through the dirt,
smelling of stopped time and all rain-
that this pause would
be filled with something braver than
ourselves
perhaps
the flight of
one dark crow, bright
against remembered night.