means I have persisted into a forty-eighth year.
Muscles and slowly tearing ligaments strap bone. Pain
buried deep as a stone in my core lifts
away: now we are two furnaces melting the ice in the ruts before
us on the old turnpike, gathering momentum up the hill, we will not speak
of credit cards, rotten sills or surgeries, we will not even stop
to inspect spider webs—at first we think a trick of winter
light, but, no, really there—spun like galaxies!—icy and hanging
from a roadside cairn. With our steps we turn the very planet beneath
us, lay down a beat on gravel, stone, pavement, and follow it up to where
we meet the wind, where I have to trust my own taut cord running straight to
the center of the Earth, the center of the Earth itself anchored with gravity’s cable
stretching through gamma rays, through solar flares to the explosions at the core
of the Sun.
I steal a glance: yes
you’re still here, wearing your sturdy boots, reaching
for my hand
—from Augur