Superb  Ermine

 

Sorrow is a monarchy we all sit on the throne of superb ermine, still wild not skinned

in moonlight,  the white scurry everywhere . I put it on like a coat when I was six.

It grew with me, cuffs past wrists.

When I remember me then how do I sound ?

Sound makes meaning. 

I grew up with the sound of snow in oak and evergreen. 

How could I not be pining always, my words slanting sideways under streetlamps?

Snow in trees makes silence with her sound, makes the poem in my pocket  

sing through holes, the loose change of angels falling

into the world. We come in on sound. The stranger cadence of wave, oceans for a heart.

And our inner work is breathing, and to know it, for the rest of our lives.

Hard enough work when everything conspires to stop the heart.

A human who is still breathing is an angel. This proposition of myself

I want to take to bed, to rest my angel head on my own chest.

None of this is supposed to be easy.

Broken feathers make a different flight path. 

It’s that path that’s Beautiful,

the difference from what we planned is The Plan

(snow plans to un-plan me forever,

to make my sorrow a warm coat with angelfur,

halos of silence and hosts of breath made from

sound, the  silver slant of sulfur is a kiss).

I whistle at myself,   the siren-undone map of my face.

Oh, how I want me.