Here, eroded, sometimes the light
strikes each step of your memory to an odd
angle, a beamwind and pulls
you back into childhood
like a gator pulls a victim into dark
water.
Here you pass crumbling brick houses,
hemlocks bare, and empty convents
as a spirit paths through menshaped
snow, the spirit
you know again
under the uncut hair of the willows—
so marvelous and dangerous to behold.
If you crawled through the hole
in the wall you would die
or be happy forever
in the light's honeycomb-ice
waiting for you.
—Judith Roney