reeds in the frozen water’s edge which,
moving in the wind,
caught small cups of water with each curtsy
the tree still, creaks into his death
mumbles ,
“how do I die without my wife.”
his wife grew away from him those dying days,
she’d had time to raise new children, wrapped around her limbs
each creak pulled at the uncovered heart
in the face of the love split by the wind
in the spring tender and dressed in flowers
the carcass of their violence love,
his resistance to the wind’s insistence,
to its insincere entreaties,
its lies and false promise
when he,
knowing from the dried heart that his only resting place
the cold frozen ground
cloven by the muddy deer yesterday.