A Writer's Ruminations

"I have no need for words.
The sleet on the windows,
the slow breathing of you sleeping,
the clock’s hum—
our home’s soft conversation.
No moon, but the clouds hold all that snow,
night softened to gray; no words can lighten
a sky like that, ease the push and pull that
holds us tight. What is it we won’t say?

Under the streetlight a rabbit shivers along
fence posts, shadows long as wet pines,
chicken wire clotted with drifts.
The heaviness of it—the spinning trees,
the sharp tongue of wind,
the fall into the smell of leaves,
into the cold, into you. Wordless."

— Patricia Kennedy Bostian, from “Sunday Afternoon”