Time wounds, all heals.

When time is a wolf,
the year a pack of
yellow teeth; when one by one
we lay us down, or

stop to kiss goodbyes
when one of us can
run no more, then back into
the trees; when the howls

pause for a moment
to finish those we've
left behind, or pick off the
slowest, the weakest...

When time is a wolf
we bleed in the snow,
we bleed like a trail of crumbs
beneath snow-black skies.

We inhale air dead
as skeleton grass,
we etch the stone-dead air with
pictures of our ghosts

and our stillborn drown
down the wind.
...But this
new year is a horse coursing
off a mountain white
with headwaters, and
green

with dreams of the
sea. When headwaters gallop
to the sea we fall

down the frozen banks
beneath the snow-blue
skies. Bleeding like an altar
we falter into

baptismal waters,
our bodies more scab
than skin. The track climbs into
forests white with bird

song, gold with sun-high
skies. We kneel in the
icing river, wash until
the water runs clean.