WINTER OUTSKIRTS
Often on these winter nights, the village rises
in a clamor, as if rising in a sky beyond the sky.
Often, the language of men does not seem to belong
to human lips. In a house on the edge of a stony field a man
often dreams of a shoreline. Dreams of snow
bleaching the surface of lawns; snow whitening
the roads where even the wind’s gone missing.
On these winter outskirts if there is no wind, no road, the man
thinks he hears darkness ringing in a world that can't be felt.
Often a man wonders who he was before this night.
Maureen Alsop
