KeepsakeThe friend who betrayed me, I hold no malice toward him, remembering when we drove the backroads of Western Massachusetts, and wild turkeys, barely lit by what red remained of a sunset, crossed the road and we stopped to let them pass. We stopped talking, after hours of talk, and watched those ghosts, those turkey-shaped shadows, slowly cross a narrow road into woods where it was already night.Lost MarchPlague sky slashed lavender. Horizon blotted out.The world wrought through a window one fogged frame at a time.Nothing but the breath humsand animals— those sparrowssuspended in a parallel dimension. They sense the seam spring becomes,while we winter in our rooms and waitfor the blur to find a form. Wait for the dayto attach to a name.Late TimeThe weather is panic evaporated into gustsof cold sun. White sun cracking gray cloudsbulked low on the horizon.What am I but an animallumbering through a late timewaiting for an impossible spring,waiting for the mind to settle,for static to sink beneath song.I wait for relief. I wait for the heartto open, for the voice to thaw.And sparrows, how do they survivehollow-boned in an arctic blast?Yesterday’s news: wet confettiscattered over curbside slush.Cold, white sun lands across my faceas I turn a corner; and I am weightlesswithout a name, nameless withouta form, dissolved into particularsunspooled into consciousness,unwinding into a worldnever more than now.