Pit

You came to the wood in a rage
and took to those birch branches like a storm,
peeling off sheets of bark paper
to reveal their golden inner faces,
throwing them down – pages,
empty as stone, no occult knot.

At a late angle, the sun hit the surface snow.
One can't know for sure
that grass doesn’t stay a private green
beneath the soft granite floor.

You blamed Buonarroti
for not carving deep through the skin,
for wasting away his virtuoso years
without finding the shape of the soul.
You work the branches naked searching,
blind to the damage: the arms and fingers
that will brittle and break in the wind.


In the twilight, you dropped like a last leaf,
licking salt from your bitten lips.
You dragged your fingers like a rake
to part the snowy cloak.
Into the frozen earth,
a pit for the bodies.