I cannot remain outside any longer

in the cold and pervasive rain.

I grab my crotch wishing for a ball of light

in the shaggy interior other people have.

I shall go away without fetching a grain

from the earth, compact,

with the climbing design

we knew and hated so well, and when it was our turn

to die we just gave up, mumbling some excuse.

Do you often go to see them?

They can’t have much cause

to journey here, yet their footprints,

foreclosed by snow …

It was the barker whose patter started it

well before we were awake, into the dawn

that grizzles, now, a fright

to be wished, to be read.

unlike the old healing that will come again in time.