by Peter Grandbois
My fingers stretch like ghosts
all night
in the quavering snow,
cold
seeping through my coat
like a memory or a mouth
too full
to contain anything but tentacles
of breath
As if my wandering could lead
to this lake
(door once opened)
that lies between moonlight
and silence,
between the swelling of trees
and what can be gathered
by wind
As if there were a word for the
flickering
eyes of stars
this shuffling
across snarled shadows of sleeping
pines
This music
That sings of stumbling
in the dark and the endless
burden of /being /
/knowing/
/nothing/ is there
Peter Grandbois is the author of eight previous books, the most recent of which is This House That (Brighthorse Books, 2017). His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in over one hundred journals. He is a senior editor at Boulevard magazine and teaches at Denison University in Ohio. You can find him at petergrandbois.com.