It isn’t that one is imaging things.
It isn’t that the night locks you in,
hangs you from its sleepless whispers.
                                                                Nor a god
nipping in and out of secret pats,
that lines your feet in stone.
                                                                It is
your father’s distant night under your bone?
Listening. The smell close stream he built
twisted like a cry under its hands,
                                                                a ghost
curled cold inside your belly.
Act like a stranger while you live.
How does the crow fly?
And will the swift clouds stop, turn for you,
ever?
                                                                Behind
the locked door you’re waiting for things,
                                                                those reasons:
something that lives in the brittle reeds of your veins
something that urges the relentless trees
                                                                to whisper of their years.